When their wishes didn’t come true Monday, the disappointment was equally enormous.
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The men’s hockey gold medal at Rio 2016 will be contested by two first time finalists in Argentina and Belgium, meaning that a brand new Olympic champion is now a certainty following an astonishing day of semi-finals action at the Deodoro Hockey Centre.
With 3:54 left in the game, Reinprecht passed to Katelyn Falgowski, whose shot on goal was directed into the cage by a German stick to cut it to 2-1.
“The first 10 minutes I though “uh oh”, here we go we are in trouble here, they really hurt us and got into our circle a few too many times and we scrambled really well and defended well and defended well”, Hager said.
“Better, but. You don’t want the journey to end”.
In recent Olympic field hockey, the US was 12th in 2012 in London and eighth in 2008 in Beijing. The last time the Americans won a medal in 1984, when they took home bronze in Los Angeles. After recording just one win in the 2012 London Olympics, the USA went 4-1 in pool play, including wins over Argentina and Australia. “It’s what happens. We’ve been there before”. Germany’s Marie Mavers opened the scoring with a goal midway through the first period. Goalkeeper Jackie Briggs had to turn away a shot on a counter late to keep the score at 2-1, and the Americans couldn’t break through for a tying goal.
Even as the score mounted, Menini said their prime thought was not, “We’re smashing Germany by a record score”, but more, “Don’t lose this”.
“We can get accused of that [choking] for sure.it’s a common word used for sport when in lead and toppled at the death”. We’ve been there before. “Sometimes you have to go, and today it was us”. “Unfortunately we couldn’t come to grips with it”. “I think if we had scored a little earlier, it would have been a different game”.
The U.S. had a good run in Rio after it shocked No. 2 Argentina with a 2-1 victory in the opening round and stunned No. 3 Australia with a 2-1 upset in the second round.
Another great opportunity was foiled at the start of the third period when Katie Reinprecht took a pass off a breakaway near the German cage but a defender intervened.
Australia responded immediately with two penalty corners of their own, but Georgina Morgan’s shots were both brilliantly saved by New Zealand goalkeeper Sally Rutherford.
Danny Kerry’s team was sensational in the first two quarters, with attacker Sophie Bray in particular proving nearly unplayable as she inspired Britain into a 3-0 half-time lead thanks to goals from Georgie Twigg, Helen Richardson-Walsh and Lily Owsley.
“Three cards was a bit hard”, Welten said.
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“We just had to believe in ourselves, execute the game plan and chase”.
