Press Trust of India
Raipur, Nov 26: Their berths in next year’s Olympics secured, all the eight participating teams in the Hockey World League Finals (HWL) are looking at the elite tournament as a platform to assess their strengths and weaknesses with little over nine months left for the Rio Games.
The HWL Finals will kick-start at the newly-built Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Stadium here from Friday with hosts India taking on Argentina in the lung-opener.
For all the competing teams, the HWL event is a perfect launch pad to prepare themselves ahead of the big ticket event, the Olympics.
“Our target is to play the best hockey here. We have improved as a team but we need to grow more as a unit. So our target will be to improve ourselves going into Rio,” Indian skipper Sardar said during an interaction with reporters here Thursday where all the eight captains of the participating teams were present.
“It will be a tough competition. There will be tough challenge for every side because the world’s best teams will be fighting it out on the pitch. The good thing is that the event is Olympic standards. So the preparations will be good,” he added.
Australia skipper Mark Knowles too had the same opinion as Sardar. “It is going to be a very good show here because the top eight teams of the world will be playing here. It is an important tournament for us because we don’t get to play big nations quite often,” said Knowles.
