, August 2009. Blair in action v Malaysia Lintott & Hockey NZ Dave tesy Photo cour
BLAIR HOPPING –
unforgotten silver Many of those who have faced off against former local, Blair Hopping, would argue he was a tiger on the turf. Despite no longer bully-ing the opposition at Olympic level, this highly-capped sportsman knows what it takes to stick it out at the top level, as JON RAWLINSON discovered.
Sport serves up moments players would rather forget, but there are also some they’ll remember forever. Former Olympian, Blair Hopping, has experienced both. “At Athens and Beijing [Olympics], we were (pretty much) only about 30 seconds away from having a shot at a medal match before missing out, so we came close more than once. That’s how it goes in sport sometimes,” he says. “On the other hand, in Manchester [Commonwealth Games], we played Pakistan in the semi-final and won 7-1. That was the first time we’d ever beaten them, let alone trounce them as we did. Everything in that game just seemed to work. We missed out against Aussie in the final but standing on that podium was awesome, a very cool experience.”
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Originally from Waipipi (Awhitu), Blair clocked up an impressive 264 caps, from 2000-2012, for the Men’s Black Sticks. Having represented New Zealand at two Commonwealth Games (Manchester and Melbourne), three Olympics (Athens, Beijing and London) and three World Cups, he knows what it takes to prepare for a major tournament. If the Olympics do go ahead as planned, he says hampered preparations will be a hurdle all squads will need to overcome. “Preparing for the Olympics you’re trying to get fit, up to speed, perfect the best combinations and refine your tactics. It’s not easy to do that with training alone so you need games to try things and see what works under pressure.
“I don’t know where other teams are at but it will have been a struggle just getting together to train let alone play. I’d imagine all the teams will come into the games being pretty raw so it’s anyone’s game.”
but, in many ways, performance requires funding.”
While the Women’s Black Sticks have never claimed an Olympic medal in hockey, their male counterparts claimed gold at the 1976 Montreal games.
“They [men’s Black Sticks] were making some good progress with the [FIH Hockey] World League giving them regular, top level competition before the pandemic. They’ve lost some experience to retirement but they’ve also had some real strength back in with Nick Wilson making himself available and Simon Child recovered from injury. They have devastating strike power.”
“The competition, worldwide, has become a lot stronger since then. We’re now competing against fulltime professionals, which doesn’t make it easy when many of our players still need to work,” Blair says. “More funding would help; they’re trying and I’d like to say it’s improving but it is [a vicious circle], funding comes with performance
Despite this, Blair is cautiously optimistic that both Black Sticks squads (men and women) could rise to the occasion in Tokyo.
Strike power is important but the squad will need to put in the hard yards through stonewall-style www.southmagazine.co.nz
