It is last call at the last-chance saloon for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. All the regional qualifiers are decided. The only route remaining are the last-chance world qualifiers in each sport, beginning today with the Island trio of Kathleen Leahy and Anna Mollenhauer of Victoria and Sara Goodman of Duncan chasing their Olympic field-hockey dreams with the Canadian women’s team in Valencia, Spain.
Oak Bay graduate Leahy, 30, who has shown steely resolve and staying power through injury setbacks in her career, and St. Michaels University School grad Mollenhauer were national champions with the University of Victoria Vikes but never together as they are a U Sports generation apart.
Mollenhauer, 24, is attempting to join her mother and former national-team player Nancy Mollenhauer as an Olympian. Goodman, 24, came out of Cowichan Secondary to play for the UBC Thunderbirds. Carrie Trumpy of Victoria is the Canadian team manager.
sa国际传媒 is in a group with powerhouses Great Britain and Spain, leaving the games against Malaysia as the likely crucial deciders. sa国际传媒, which qualified for the last-chance opportunity by placing fourth in the 2023 Santiago Pan Am Games, opens today in Valencia against Great Britain and plays Malaysia on Sunday and Spain on Tuesday. The cross-over round is Thursday and the medal round next Saturday. Three of the four teams will advance to Paris for the Olympics.
“We’ve had an excellent camp focused around areas of learning from the Pan Am Games. These will stand us in good stead for Valencia,” said Canadian head coach Danny Kerry.
“We understand that, on ranking and historically, we are underdogs in the tournament.”
sa国际传媒 has not qualified for the Olympics in women’s field hockey since the Island-laden 1992 team played in Barcelona. Kerry coached the Great Britain women’s team to the bronze medal at the 2012 London Olympics and to gold at the 2016 Rio Olympics and was hired by Field Hockey sa国际传媒 to end the Canadian Olympic drought.
“We will be well prepared, tactically and physically ready, for the games ahead and very together as a team,” said Kerry.
sa国际传媒 came within a heartbeat of qualifying for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics but was denied in a shootout against Ireland in what was the deciding game for a berth in Tokyo.
“We have a small nucleus of players who understand the nature of Olympic qualifier tournaments, and understand how to leverage that experience,” said Kerry.
The core group also has experience from the 2022 World Cup in Spain and the Netherlands and the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, England.
“We have a vibrant, energetic group itching to get going,” said Kerry.
Host France, Pan Am Games champion Argentina, Asian Games champion China, Oceania-champion Australia, European champion Netherlands and African champion South Africa have qualified for the 2024 Olympics. The remaining six berths for Paris will be decided in the two qualifying tournaments, the Pool B featuring sa国际传媒 in Valencia, and Pool A with Belgium, Korea, Ireland and Ukraine in Ranchi, India.
The Canadian men’s team, with Tokyo Olympics veteran James Kirkpatrick of Victoria and UVic products Keegan Pereira, Matthew Sarmento and Brenden Bissett, opens its last-chance Olympic qualifier for Paris 2024 on Monday in Muscat, Oman.
