Las Leonas and Los Leones already know their rivals for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games

With just six months to go before the Olympic Games, the different disciplines are starting to define the details Paris 2024. In that context, the Field hockey is no exception, but the teams that will participate in both the women’s and men’s groups already know the rivals they will face in their respective groups, which will give way to the dream of the gold medal that Leona and Leones have in common.

The formation of the zones was carried out once the 12 teams that will be present in the French capital had been defined. Once the quotas were exhausted, the countries were divided into two zones of six teams which sought to achieve as much equality as possible. The International Hockey Federation (FIH) clarified this, confirming it The distribution of those selected in each group corresponds to their position in the world rankingas it was formed until January 21st, the date on which the pre-Olympic tournaments ended.

The lionesswho are third in the world rankings and have just won the silver medal at Tokyo 2020, losing in the final against the Netherlands, share the group with the second placed team, Australia, Great Britain in sixth place, Spain in seventh place, the United States and South Africaas tenth and eleventh respectively.

Group A instead has the Netherlands as its first candidate, first in the standings and which will try to defend the gold won in the Tokyo event in Paris. There they will meet the fourth-placed team, Belgium, Germany (5th), Japan (8th), China (9th) and hosts France (12th).

Qualifying for the Olympic Games through the Pre-Olympic Games in Valencia were Belgium and Spain, who played the final which was decided in favor of the Belgians (1-2), and Great Britain, who won bronze at the last Games of Tokyo. 2020. and who won the third place match against Ireland (1-2).

The Lionesses should not have participated in this competition because they had secured the ranking well in advance by winning the gold medal at the Santiago 2023 Pan American Games, where they beat the United States 2-1 in the final.

The other teams that followed in Argentina’s footsteps as continental champions were Australia, China and South Africa. Then, the Netherlands did so as the current Olympic and world champions in 2022. Furthermore, France manages to be present as the host country of the competition.

The Paris Olympic hockey tournament will be played between Saturday 27 July and Sunday 9 August, when the women’s final will be played, one day before the men’s. The competition will take place at the Yves-du-Manoir stadium, which already hosted the Paris Games a hundred years ago, in 1924.

Although the qualifiers have just been defined, Las Leonas has already started preparing to seek the long-awaited gold medal. That’s why on January 16th they started their season to arrive in Paris in the best possible way.

The group of Lions

Just as the FIH defined the qualifiers for women’s field hockey, they did so for men’s as well. Here is what the five teams that Los Leones will face will look like, following the same group division criteria Belgium -reigning champion-, India, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland. They are also part of group B.

Zone A will consist of the Netherlands, Germany, Great Britain, Spain, France and South Africa.

It is worth mentioning that Argentina also got its ranking early by taking first place at the 2023 Pan American Games, when it beat competing local team Chile 3-1.