GOLDEN OLYMPIC MOMENTS

• 9 teams from the 1976 Montreal Olympic hockey competition did not compete in the 1980 Moscow Olympic hockey tournament. The boycotting teams included the top 3 teams at Montreal - New Zealand (gold), Australia (silver) and Pakistan (bronze). European hockey powerhouses Germany, Holland and Great Britain also did not compete in this US-led boycott of the 1980 Olympic Games.
  
  
• The Moscow Olympics hockey competition was played on poligras fields laid at the Dynamo and Young Pioneers clubs. The synthetic pitches did not have automatic sprinklers. When the pitches had to be watered, it was by lorries with hoses fixed to their bonnets.
  
  
• In a greatly weakened field of participants, India thrashed last minute entry Tanzania 18-0 in its first match. In one purple patch, India found the net 5 times in as many minutes. This huge victory over Tanzania was the second biggest score in Olympic hockey, after the 24-1 victory by India over USA in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics.
  
  
• India was lucky to get away with a 2-2 draw with Poland in the next game, with Merwyn Fernandes equalising for India with only 5 seconds to spare. India had another lucky 2-2 draw with Spain, with the equaliser coming in the last 4 minutes. After surviving these hiccups, India beat Cuba 13-0 and hosts USSR 4-2 to come second in the pool (behind Spain) and qualify for the final.
  
  
• In the final against Spain, India had a rousing start and established a comfortable three goal lead early in the second half. But Spain gamely bounced back into the game with 2 unanswered goals. With Spain raiding the Indian defence, and with only 6 minutes left, Mohammed Shaheed scored a goal to give more breathing room to India.
  
  
• However, with only 4 minutes remaining, Spain scored yet again with their skipper Juan Amat completing his hat-trick. The atmosphere in the last few minutes was electric, and India finally won the thriller 4-3, and thus regained the elusive gold after 16 long years. Spain had to be content with the Fairplay Trophy.
  
  
• Those were the days before satellite television had invaded India. Fans faithfully followed the game on Akashvani, and this golden victory was the top story in the Doordarshan bulletin that night.
  
  
• The 16 goals scored by centre-forward Surinder Singh Sodhi in the 1980 Moscow Olympics is the highest tally by an Indian in an Olympic hockey competition. It beat the earlier record of 15 goals set by the great Udham Singh in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics.
  
  
• Hockey proved very popular with the fans in Moscow. There were attendance figures of 10,000 or more at nearly every game. A total of 177,880 paying spectators watched the hockey matches. This made hockey the 6th most watched event at the Moscow Olympics.
  
  
• For the generation of Indians born after the mid-1960s, the Moscow Olympics hockey title remains their only link to India's golden Olympic past.
  
  
• India's record in the 1980 Olympics at Moscow was as follows :
• Played: 6
• Won: 4
• Drawn: 2
• Goals For: 43
• Goals Against: 9
  
  
• The following were the members of the 1980 Indian Olympic Team :
• Vasudevan Bhaskaran (captain)
• Allen Schofield (goalkeeper)
• Bir Bahadur Chhetri
• Sylvanus Dung Dung
• Rajinder Singh
• Davinder Singh
• Gurmail Singh
• Ravinder Pal Singh
• Sommayya Maneypande
• Maharaj Krishan Kaushik
• Charanjit Kumar
• Merwyn Fernandes
• Amarjit Singh Rana
• Mohammed Shahid
• Zafar Iqbal
• Surinder Singh Sodhi

Photo Courtesy Wills Book of Excellence - Olympics