In a special interview with FIH, iconic Australia striker Katrina Powell – who won two Olympic gold medals as a central figure in Ric Charlesworth’s sensational Hockeyroos side of the late 1990s / early 2000s, and who is now the head coach of the team she represented so wonderfully as a player – looks back on her time competing at the Olympic Games of Atlanta 1996, Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004.
Hi Katrina, thanks for talking to us! Clearly you enjoyed some wonderful Olympic moments with the Hockeyroos, especially playing under head coach Ric Charlesworth. You faced Korea in the gold medal match, the only team to take points off you in the round-robin. What was the mood like going into that final?
Katrina Powell: “It was really ‘job not done’ mood. We had gone to Atlanta wanting to get the gold medal, that was a definite goal for us. It wasn’t a case of, let’s go see how we play and see what will happen. It was that we want to be playing in the late game, on this date, that is what we want to do. It was just enough to make the final. I think we made the final a few days out, what with Korea being the only team to take points off us. At that stage, there was just eight teams in the competition; you play seven matches and then it is 1 versus 2, 3 versus 4 [for the medals]. So even a couple of days out, we knew that we were in the final. I was really nervous for what felt like three days straight. I remember the game was at eight o’clock at night, which gave me all day to get really nervous about what was going to happen. It had that real sense of not being satisfied with silver, that the job was not done.”
It was another close one, but the Hockeyroos triumphed thanks to two goals from Alyson Annan before you made it 3-1 with seven minutes to go. Scoring in an Olympic final to help your team win gold must have been an incredible feeling!
Katrina Powell: “It was amazing. That was my first major tournament, as I’d been left out of the major tournaments before that. I pushed to break into that team, and I assume that is why we were so good because there were so many players trying to get in. While we had this lofty goal of winning an Olympic gold medal, my concern was that I might receive an Olympic gold medal and not feel like I’d earned it. That was my fear. I know that is a really unusual one to have, but that is what kept me training once I was selected, and through the whole tournament. I must contribute, I must feel like I’m doing something for the team. I’m a striker, and every striker out there listening to this will know that putting the ball in the back of the net is one of the good things you can do to contribute. It’s not the only thing – for other developing strikers listening to this – there are lots of things you can do to contribute! But scoring in that final, and a few during the tournament, really made me feel like I had contributed.”
“It was a random goal. It was on the backhand when you weren’t allowed to use the inside [edge] of the stick. I remember Ric Charlesworth always giving me a hard time about going to my left side, but I am left-handed so it just felt natural to be on that side. It was a really weird shot off the toe of the stick, on the upright. One of my favourite memories of that was actually watching it back later. On the vision there is a shot from behind the goal, where you can actually see the whole team. Once it goes in, the arms go up from everyone on the field. It my favourite little snippet of memory, that footage. It got the whole team going – it was fantastic.”
It is a shame that Ric wasn’t in the shot as well, although he might not have been jumping up and down in quite the same way!
Katrina Powell: “He wasn’t! Actually, there was a shot of the bench, and it was the replay of everyone jumping off the bench [in celebration]. You can see him walking off towards the half-way line. He was marching off in the other direction, and I thought, ‘oh my god, is nothing good enough for this man?!’ I found out years later that one of the players, who was about to be subbed on, turned to the bench and said, ‘that’s it, we’ve won it!’. He was like, ‘you get out there and you run like a dog’! For him, until the final whistle, you do not stop. You do not think that you have won anything, it is not over yet. It was a really good lesson, although it did take me a couple of years to find that out! Keep playing. Anything can happen in hockey.”
Four years later, it was Sydney 2000, also with Ric. It was a very special Olympics, and for the Hockeyroos, it doesn’t get much better than winning gold on home soil! What are your memories from that one?
Katrina Powell: “It is really hard to describe. Atlanta was really exciting, as it was my first Olympics. This had added pressure, obviously, being a home Games. It felt a little bit more like a relief [to win]. We were the reigning Olympic champions, we had expectations coming into Sydney. There were plenty of other Australians doing well [at Sydney 2000]. Obviously, all of the volunteers in Sydney were Australians. When we were in our uniforms, they would ask us what sport we played. I’d say that I was in the hockey team, and they would say ‘oh great, another gold medal’. It was really in your face. With friends and family, and the home crowd, there was a lot more pressure to be successful. But what did help us was that we knew that we could do it, we knew how to play big games and win under at least some pressure. That belief, once you have got that, it’s hard to shake.”
It is all about having the ability to cope with that pressure, which you did.
Katrina Powell: “Yes. I also think it is the kind of thing that you flip. You think: ‘I want that. I want to play in those conditions. I want to test myself on the world’s biggest stage. I want to score in an Olympic final. I want my name up on the board’. You have to flip it and say, ‘yes, bring it on. This means something to me. I’ve prepared for it. Now I want to show what I can do’.”
With a 5th place finish at Athens 2004, it didn’t quite end the way you had perhaps hoped. But if someone would have said to you when you were a little girl that you’d represent the Hockeyroos at three Olympics and win two gold medals, you would have taken that, right?!
Katrina Powell: “No doubt about it. It was all that I ever wanted to do when I was growing up, to play. I followed my elder sister Lisa, she was in both of those Olympic medal winning teams. We would play in the back yard for hours. I would follow her around to all the different teams that she played for, It [hockey] was part of our family growing up in Canberra, it is what our family did. So yes, I would have taken that any day of the week, absolutely.”
The hockey competitions at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 will take place from Saturday 24 July to Friday 6 August 2021. Both the men’s and women’s competitions feature 12 teams, split into two pools of six ahead of quarter-finals, semi-finals and medal matches. For more information about the hockey competitions at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, visit https://tokyo2020.org/en/sports/hockey/.
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