As the countdown reached to 100 days before the Rio 2016 Summer Games opening ceremony, the International Hockey Federation (FIH) has confirmed the official match schedules for the men’s and women’s version of hockey events which will be held between August 6-19, 2016 at Deodoro Olympic Park.
The mega sporting event which is scheduled in August this year will have 12 men’s and 12 women’s team to feature in hockey events.
These teams qualified for the games during the Hockey World League and Continental Championships. While this will be the first version of Olympic Games which has quarterfinals planned under the hockey event and all the matches will be hosted on two pitches of Deodoro Olympic Park. Without classification games will mean the top four teams from the two pools will qualify for the quarterfinals.
And then it will be like any other competitive tournament, Winners go to Semifinals wherein the two losing teams will play for bronze while winning teams will play for the top two medals.
The medal matches are to be played on 18th & 19th August wherein 18th will be the day for men’s version while 19 will be for women’s version.
The schedules are already agreed upon by the International Hockey Federation, Rio 2016 Sports Department, the International Olympic Committee and the Olympic Broadcast Services- while the competition schedule was developed by the FIH Competitions’ and Athletes’ Committees, a sign off of approval from the four sides meant it became official.
After the completion of approval process,Michael Green, Chairperson of the FIH Athletes’ Committee, said: “The Olympic schedule is a complex jigsaw reflecting the desire to keep an equitable spread of times and pitch allocation for all teams across both genders alongside the specific needs of the global broadcasters.”
“We believe this schedule will provide players, viewers and fans alike with an exciting Olympic hockey event to showcase and promote our sport across the world,” he further added.
The competition format is as below:
In the preliminary round 12 teams are divided into two pools of six teams. Each team plays every other team in its pool.
The two pools were determined by the FIH protocol on pool composition based on the FIH World Ranking as at 1 January 2016 as follows:
Pool A: Seed 1; 4; 5; 8; 9; 12
Pool B: Seed 2; 3; 6; 7; 10; 11
The top four teams in each pool proceed to the Quarter-Finals, with the remaining four teams eliminated at this stage. The winners of the Quarter-Finals progress to the Semi-Finals, the winners of which meet in the gold medal match. The losers of the Semi-Finals will play for the bronze medal. Detailed schedule