Hockey: Record has Patel smiling

By MARK GEENTY in Athens

Ramesh Patel has rarely sported such a broad grin since an Olympic gold medal was draped around his neck in 1976.

Chief executive of the New Zealand Hockey Federation since 1989, he is delighted at the sixth placing of the men's and women's sides in Athens.

He said the results put them two years ahead of their high-performance plan set up 18 months ago.

"We have a long-term vision of both teams winning medals in Beijing in 2008," he said.

"These Olympics were a little bit too soon to expect that. We were saying that around 2006 we would hope to be approaching the top six.

"This is ahead of schedule, which is great. The hard part is to stay there. We know how easy it is to slip out of the top six."

Both teams boosted their rankings, the women from ninth and the men from 11th to book places in the Champions Trophy tournaments.

The women's tournament is in Argentina in November and the men's is in Pakistan in December.

The men were the bigger overachievers, with their best finish since 1976. They were unlucky not to be playing for medals after their 4-3 loss to eventual silver medallists the Netherlands, following a 4-1 defeat by Australia.

After that they had wins over Argentina, India, South Africa and Korea, before losing to Pakistan in the playoff for fifth.

"For the men to now get into the top six is huge," Patel said.

"We've always been on the conservative side, saying if they got into the top eight and could stay there, that would be great."

The women, under the coaching of Australian Ian Rutledge, who is contracted to 2006, matched their sixth placing from Sydney, where they fielded a more experienced unit.

Retiring goalkeeper Helen Clarke and young defender Lizzy Igasan were solid at the back, but goalscoring was a problem because they did not hit the net until their fourth match.

Youngsters Stacey Carr and Emily Naylor also had their moments, but the future looked healthy for the team who would possibly also lose captain Suzie Muirhead and several other, lesser lights, to retirement.

Patel hoped the performances would draw more funding from national body Sparc.

He said he was looking forward to the Melbourne Commonwealth Games in March 2006.

"We are on track for Beijing medals, so we're hoping they'll continue with the funding they've given us."

- NZPA