Hockey Team Rises But...

Most emphatic of the early men's preliminary games was Pakistan's 8-1 drubbing of Great Britain. While the British could not match the stick-work and the fast breaks of the Pakistanis, it was the shots from penalty corners by Sohail Abbas that crushed them

By Gul Hameed Bhatti

From the first Olympic Games held in the new millennium, the first year of the 21st century, Pakistan's sports contingent returned home empty-handed yet again. The same fate had befallen them at Atlanta four years earlier. At Sydney 2000, their hockey team did better than the last time, but only slightly. It finished fourth which was an improvement, however, on the dismal sixth place it had attained at Atlanta. The memory of Pakistan's last Olympic Games medal, a bronze in the hockey event at Barcelona 1992, had already receded into the distant past.

No joy was experienced through the other playing members of the Pakistan entourage either. The two athletes, a male and a female, finished at the very end of the respective heats of their chosen events. All four boxers bowed out after making just one appearance each. The lone marksman and the solitary swimmer were mega disappointments. A three-member rowing team managed to qualify for an Olympiad for the first time. The results the trio attained were pathetic, to say the least.

The star of the Pakistan hockey team, three-time gold medallists at previous Olympics having managed to break the stranglehold of neighbouring India -- who claimed the Olympic Games hockey gold a record eight times from 1928 to 1980, was already on the wane. Since 1984 at Los Angeles, no more gold medals had come Pakistan's way. The last time they claimed a gold medal in any major international hockey was at Sydney in 1994 when they clinched the World Cup title under the irrepressible Shahbaz Ahmed.

The gold medals had dried up at the Champions Trophy event too, Pakistan's last top of the podium finishing also having come under Shahbaz, at Lahore in 1994. Until then, the national hockey team had picked up three gold -- including the first two in 1978 and 1980, four silver and three bronze medals. At the World Cup, Pakistan had won four gold medals in addition to two silver since 1971.

For the second time in 11 hockey competitions at the Asian Games -- in the first nine editions Pakistan had bagged as many as seven gold and two silver medals -- the nation's hockey squad was restricted to a bronze, at Bangkok in 1998. Four years earlier at Hiroshima, Pakistan had suffered the same fate.

Mansoor Ahmed, the goalkeeper, was Pakistan's hockey captain at Atlanta in 1996 when the team managed to attain only the sixth position at the Olympic Games. Mansoor was then appearing in his third consecutive Olympiad. In spite of the squad's poor show, he was retained as captain for the Champions Trophy event in Madras, India, later the same year where Pakistan picked up a silver medal.

After a sixth place finish at the next Champions Trophy event, at Adelaide in 1997, Mansoor's days as skipper came to an end. He was replaced by his Atlanta vice-captain, inside-right Tahir Zaman, under whom Pakistan could only end at the fifth spot in the 1998 World Cup staged in Utrecht. The captaincy immediately passed on to half-back Mohammad Usman.

At the inaugural hockey competition that was part of the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur, under new captain Usman Pakistan failed to make the semifinals. In fact, the team finished a miserable eighth in the ranking. Usman, however, helped Pakistan win a silver medal at the Champions Trophy held in Lahore later the same year.

THE CAPTAINCY CHANGES HANDS AGAIN

Usman's head, however, was on the chopping block soon. The team's leadership changed hands and now it was Atif Bashir's turn to try out a new job. Atif, a medical doctor by profession, helped Pakistan win a bronze medal at the Bangkok Asian Games in 1998 and then there was a gold medal finish at the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup in Kuala Lumpur the following year.

Pakistan had won four silver medals and a bronze in the previous eight Azlan Shah competitions since the event's inaugural year in 1983. Now, in 1999, they earned their first gold medal. Under Atif Bashir the next assignment was a fiasco, as Pakistan finished sixth at the Champions Trophy in Brisbane in 1999.

The captaincy went back to Mohammad Usman. Later in the year 1999, he took the Pakistan team to the four-nation Rabobank Challenge tournament in Amstelveen and then another four-nation event in Wettingen. Under Usman, Pakistan won the silver medal at the Asia Cup in Kuala Lumpur, also in 1999.

Goalkeeper Ahmed Alam was the next person to don the captain's cap and immediately led the team to glory. Pakistan retained their Sultan Azlan Shah Cup title in the year 2000, which they had first claimed under Atif Bashir's leadership the previous year.

Ahmed Alam was then nominated captain of what the hockey management called 'a strong Pakistan hockey squad' for the Sydney Olympics. "We have a very balanced team and will do our best to bring the Olympic glory back to Pakistan," team manager Islahuddin Siddiqui said.

Pakistan's 17-member squad was reduced to 16 after a series of matches in Australia and New Zealand before the summer games in September of the year 2000.

"We have selected the best available squad after trials which were open and the team has been selected on merit," Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) president Lt-General Abdul Aziz Khan told reporters.

Former captain Shahbaz Ahmed did not appear at the trials, ending speculation of a comeback. Pakistan had to qualify for the Olympics in Osaka, Japan, the previous March. The three-time Olympic champions lost their Asian Games title to India in 1998.

Pakistan were expected to pose a threat to European nations as they had a penalty corner expert in Sohail Abbas, who scored a record 62 goals in the year 1999.

Pakistan were placed in pool A of the Sydney Olympics along with defending champions the Netherlands, in addition to Germany, Canada, Malaysia and Great Britain.

Apart from Ahmed Alam, the Pakistan team included Kamran Ashraf, his deputy who had also played at Atlanta. Others making their second appearance each were Shafqat Malik and Mohammad Sarwar.

The skipper was playing in his first Olympiad. The others were goalkeeper Mohammad Qasim, Ali Raza, Tariq Imran, Sohail Abbas, the brothers Irfan Yousuf and Imran Yousuf, Waseem Ahmed, Mohammad Nadeem ND, Atif Bashir, Sameer Hussain, Kashif Jawwad and Mohammad Anis.

Nadeem ND was excluded from the Atlanta 1996 squad at the last moment following the return of Shahbaz Ahmed. Mohammad Saqlain was dropped from the Sydney-bound team on charges of indiscipline as he was in 2004 too when the outfit was leaving for the Athens Olympiad. Saqlain is, however, in the team for the Beijing Olympics this year!

The team manager-coach at Sydney was Islahuddin Siddiqui, one of Pakistan's most successful hockey captains. He had performed the manager's role at Seoul 1988 and Barcelona 1992 also, apart from having played at the Olympic Games in Munich 1972 and Montreal 1976, as vice-captain to Abdul Rasheed Junior in the latter event.

Iftikhar Syed accompanied the team as associate coach. He too had appeared in two Olympiads -- in 1972 and 1976.

THE NETHERLANDS RETAIN

HOCKEY TITLE

The Netherlands beat Great Britain 4-2 in the first men's game of the tournament. The fortunes of sport are such that Calum Giles's penalty shot for Great Britain in this game could have changed the course of the competition had he not flicked it straight to the goalie. But no one was to realise it at the time.

The Australian men's team beat newcomers Poland 4-0; however, most emphatic of the early men's preliminary games was Pakistan's 8-1 drubbing of Great Britain. While the British could not match the stick-work and the fast breaks of the Pakistanis, it was the shots from penalty corners by Sohail Abbas that crushed them.

There were exuberant scenes featuring the many Pakistani supporters in the crowd. Many members of Sydney's multicultural communities turned out to support teams from their countries of origin.

Hockey minnows Canada nearly pulled off a major upset, being up 1-0 against Germany with ten minutes to go. They eventually lost 2-1 but goalkeeper Mike Mahood received many plaudits for his sensational display. In another match Malaysia's men valiantly held the eventual winners, the Netherlands, 0-0. The Netherlands had an apparently fair goal disallowed in the second half. Their official protest was later dismissed.

Poland had a sensational win on the fourth day of play, beating European giant Spain 4-1, with a team that was sourced virtually from a single club. This result, coming after Poland's loss to Australia two days before, was outstanding. Spain let in three goals in a 13-minute period, which cruelled their chance to progress. Spain later lost 5-1 to Argentina.

The Australian team's least impressive performance in the preliminaries was the 2ñ2 draw against Spain. In the first half the Kookaburras took the ball into the circle 24 times for just one shot on goal. Despite this poor conversion rate the Kookaburras looked clearly sharper and more creative, particularly in the second half.

Other draws in the round included a remarkable 5-5 result between Poland and Argentina and a 1-1 tie for Germany and Pakistan.

After 11 days of competition in the men's preliminary games the rankings were finally decided. Pakistan headed pool A, after they had a convincing and, as it turned out for the Dutch, fortuitous win over the Netherlands 2-0. It seemed the Dutch practised brinkmanship throughout the tournament before retaining the Olympic championship.

After losing to Pakistan in their final pool A match they walked off the field believing they had missed the semifinals. Two hours later they had a most unlikely reprieve when Great Britain beat Germany 2-1, tipping the Germans out of the semifinals and ushering back the Dutch on goal differences. Pool B saw Australia clear on top, after defeating Korea 2-1. Korea placed second and also entered the semifinals.

Day 13 proved decidedly unlucky for two of the four men's semifinalists. The match between Australia and the Netherlands was a classic in which both teams' defences were magnificent in a fluctuating, epic battle. A penalty shoot-out determined the winner when both teams remained goalless after 70 minutes of regulation play and 15 minutes of extra time.

The Netherlands edged out Australia 5-4 when Dutch goalkeeper Ronald Jansen saved Brent Livermore's penalty stroke. The Australians were devastated and Livermore fell to his knees in disappointment.

Asian hockey powers Pakistan and Korea duelled in a tight affair in the other semifinal. The Koreans sped off the goal line and shut down Pakistan's scoring machine, Sohail Abbas. Korea scored the only goal in the 57th minute when Song Seung-Tae flicked in after a penalty corner, thereby booking his team a place in the gold medal match.

The men's final appeared to be a one-horse race, with little chance given the Koreans. Yet the final hockey match of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games was a worthy contest for the gold. A hat-trick of goals from Dutch captain Stephan Veen and his winning penalty in the shoot-out was the best way for the veteran to retire.

But the courageous Koreans fought back to nearly deny Veen his romantic exit. Down 3-1 with four minutes to go, they used their speedy forwards to make fast breaks and scored a brace of goals. The goals by their captain, Kang Keon-Wook, and Kim Kyung-Seok were fantastic conversions of penalty corners.

Two desperate periods of extra time led to the final shoot-out, where the Dutch triumphed, holding their nerve with all five of their penalty converters scoring. Australia won the bronze medal match 6ñ3 against Pakistan. Sohail took his goals tally to eight, second only to Argentina's Jorge Lombi who netted as many as 13.

Hockey aficionados agreed after the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games that the guard had not changed. The Australian Hockeyroos had remained favourites to retain their women's Olympic gold medal in spite of the fact that they had failed to make the final at the Champions Trophy earlier in the year. It was the first time in eight years that the Australian team had not made the final of a major tournament. The shock loss perhaps sharpened their Olympic resolve.

The Netherlands were expected to retain their men's champions' mantle, in spite of the retirements from their Atlanta gold winning team and their defeat at the European Nations Cup. With their gold medals both teams joined hockey's exclusive 'consecutive gold' club, the first to do so since the legendary Indian run of six gold medals ended at Melbourne in 1956.

SHAZIA HIDAYAT BRAVES ON BUT FINISHES LAST

As in Atlanta four years earlier, where athlete Shabana Akhtar had become the first Pakistani female ever to feature in an Olympiad, it was Shazia Hidayat's turn at Sydney. Having won a wild card entry, like the male athlete Maqsood Ahmed, skeet shooter Khurram Inam and swimmer Kamal Salman Masud, the Chichawatni-born Shazia, then 24 years old, was a champion middle and long distance runner at home but was surely out of her depth at the international level.

She finished 14th out of the same number of participants in the 1500 metres race in a first round heat, with a poor time of 5:07.17 minutes. The gold medal winner, Algeria's Nouria Merah-Benida, later covered the distance in a mere 4:05.10 minutes.

Maqsood Ahmed, who had created a Pakistan record while winning the gold medal at the 1999 South Asian Federation (SAF) Games in Kathmandu with a brisk time of 21.15 seconds, managed to do so at Sydney only in 21.70 seconds and finish last in his heat.

Boxer Usmanullah Khan, who was featuring in his second Olympics after 1996, went down in the first round. So did his other colleagues, including the highly-rated Syed Asghar Ali who had actually got a bye in his first match. The rowing trio performed poorly, not being able to finish anywhere.

Shooter Khurram Inam ended halfway down the roster in the skeet event. Kamal Salman Masud, who had got his second wild card selection, fared even worse than he had at Atlanta 1996. His timing for the 100 metres butterfly was 1:00.60 minutes -- four years earlier he had done so in 58.59 seconds -- and he ended seventh out of seven swimmers.

Gold medal winner in the event at Sydney was Sweden's Lars Frolander, who swam the distance in a mere 52.00 seconds.

SYDNEY GAMES THE LARGEST YET

The Sydney 2000 Games in Australia were the largest yet, with 10,651 athletes competing in 300 events. Despite their size, they were well organised, renewing faith in the Olympic Movement.

Birgit Fischer earned two gold medals in Kayak to become the first woman in any sport to win medals 20 years apart. Judoka Ryoko Tamura lost in the final in both Barcelona and Atlanta, but came back to win the gold medal in Sydney. Steven Redgrave became the first rower to win gold medals at five consecutive Olympics.

The US softball team won in stirring fashion, losing three games in a row and then coming back to defeat each of the teams they had lost to. Participation amounted to 199 NOCs (nations) and four individual athletes (IOA) with 10,651 athletes (4,069 women, 6,582 men) and there were 300 events in 28 sports.

The 2000 Summer Olympics or the Millennium Games/Games of the New Millennium, were officially known as the Games of the XXVII Olympiad.

Sydney won the right to host the Games on September 23, 1993, after being selected over Beijing, Berlin, Istanbul and Manchester in four rounds of voting, at the 101st IOC Session in Monte Carlo, Monaco.

A record 199 nations entered the stadium at the opening ceremony, the only missing IOC member being Afghanistan (suspended due to the Taliban regime's prohibition against practicing any kind of sports). Most remarkable was the entering of North and South Korea as one team, using a specially designed unification flag: a white background flag with a blue map of the Korea peninsula; the two teams would compete separately, however. Four athletes from East Timor also marched in the parade of nations.

Although the country-to-be had no national olympic committee then, they were allowed to compete under the Olympic flag. The Governor-General, Sir William Deane, opened the games.

The Olympic flag was carried around the arena by eight former Australian Olympic champions Bill Roycroft, Murray Rose, Liane Tooth, Gillian Rolton, Marjorie Jackson, Lorraine Crapp, Michael Wenden and Nick Green.

The opening ceremony concluded with the lighting of the Olympic flame. Former Australian Olympic champion Herb Elliott brought the Olympic flame into the stadium. Then, celebrating 100 years of women's participation in the Olympic Games, former Australian women Olympic champions Betty Cuthbert and Raelene Boyle, Dawn Fraser, Shirley Strickland (later Shirley Strickland de la Hunty), Shane Gould and Debbie Flintoff-King brought the torch through the stadium, handing it over to Cathy Freeman, who lit the flame in the cauldron within a circle of fire.

The triathlon made its Olympic debut with the women's race. Set in the surroundings of the iconic Sydney Opera House, Brigitte McMahon representing Switzerland swam, cycled and ran to the first gold medal in the sport, beating the favoured home athletes.

The first star of the Games was Ian Thorpe. The 17-year-old Australian first set a new world record in the 400m freestyle final before competing in an exciting 4x100m freestyle final. Swimming the last leg, Thorpe passed the leading Americans and arrived in a new world record time, two tenths of a second ahead of the Americans.

In the same event for women, the Americans also broke the world record, finishing ahead of the Netherlands and Sweden.

China won the gold medal in the men's team all-around gymnastics competition, after being the runner-up in the previous two Olympics. The other medals were taken by Ukraine and Russia, respectively.

By rowing in the winning coxless four, Steve Redgrave of Great Britain became a member of a select group who had won gold medals at five consecutive Olympics.

Australian Cathy Freeman won the 400 metre final in front of a jubilant Sydney crowd at the Olympic Stadium, ahead of Lorraine Graham of Jamaica and Katharine Merry of Great Britain. Freeman's win made her the first competitor in Olympic Games history to light the Olympic flame and then go on to win a gold medal.

Cameroon won a historic gold medal over Spain in the men's Olympic football final at the Olympic Stadium. The game went to a penalty shootout.

Marion Jones, winner of three golds and two bronzes for the United States, relinquished her medals in October 2007 after confessing that she had taken tetrahydrogestrinone (THG) from September 2000 through July 2001. The IOC has formally stripped Jones of her five medals. She has also been banned from competing for two years by the IAAF.

United States headed the medals table with a tally of 92, with 37 gold, 24 silver and 31 bronze. Russia were second with a total of 88 that comprised 32 gold, 28 silver and 28 bronze. China took 28 gold, 16 silver and 15 bronze for 59 medals overall.

The other nations among the top ten were Australia 58 (16-25-17), Germany 56 (13-17-26), France 38 (13-14-11), Italy 34 (13-8-13), Netherlands 25 (12-9-4), Cuba 29 (11-11-7) and Great Britain 28 (11-10-7).

Courtesy: The News Pakistan