Olympic postponement sees hockey world champions Belgium lose advantage

Gold medal favourites Belgium worry they may have misplaced among the benefit they held over their rivals for the Olympic males’s hockey title after the postponement of the Tokyo Games and the novel coronavirus-induced sporting hiatus.

Coach Shane McLeod, who led Belgium to silver in Rio de Janeiro 4 years in the past after which a World Cup title in 2018, believes the enjoying discipline is now degree once more with the Games postponed by a 12 months. But he insists it solely served to intensify the problem for him and his gamers.

“I was very happy with how we had been going,” he stated, with Belgium having secured qualification by profitable final 12 months’s EuroHockey Nations Championship whereas their rivals needed to play one other qualifying event as a way to e book a berth to Japan.

“We bought ourselves eight weeks that other nations didn’t have, so while we were working on individual aspects of our game, other countries were still needing to qualify.

“I think we had a bit of a headstart and you saw that in the Pro League games we played earlier this year.”

Belgium have been topping the desk after six matches of the new-look nine-nation round-robin competitors that extends over a two-year interval and pits hockey’s high sides towards one another in common competitors.

“I’m a bit disappointed we weren’t able to just keep on going, mainly because of the results we were achieving,” the 51-year-old New Zealand-born McLeod added in an interview with Reuters.

“Now we have to recreate that performance gap, but it will be a fresh challenge.”

McLeod, who has labored in numerous capacities in Belgian hockey over the past twenty years, had deliberate a 12-month sabbatical after this 12 months’s Games however has put that on maintain to stick with the staff as they readjust plans for subsequent 12 months.

STIMULATING

He stated the lockdown because of the COVID-19 pandemic had introduced new challenges which had confirmed “stimulating”.

“Just trying to figure out how do we do this; what is going to be the best possible outcome for us has been quite a driving factor,” he stated.

“We’ve spent a lot of time working out how we best prepare for the Olympics in these current circumstances and a lot more detailed conversations with our sports science colleagues.

“Normally we have a formula that we reproduce, maybe fine tune a little, but this is really different and now were ad-libbing in areas where we’ve never been before but seeing some positive outcomes.

“All the nations have pressed the ‘reset’ button now and have to start from scratch again, but I think we are going to be OK,” McLeod added.