BEIJING // South Korea and China are at an advantage thanks to their familiarity with the steamy conditions and pose a serious threat in the Olympic women's hockey event, the Dutch coach Marc Lammers said toay. The Dutch women, silver medallists in the 2004 Games in Athens, won the World Cup in 2006 and are among the favourites for the Olympic title. "The humidity is really high, the temperature is really high. For us, it is more than normal. For China it is normal, for Korea it is normal," he said after practice, comparing conditions here to the cooler climate at home.
"We are in good shape physically, that is why we will be able to compete with those countries here," he added. The Dutch play China and South Korea in their group. Fast developing China finished fourth at the 2004 Athens Games and at the recent Champions Trophy lost the third place match to the Dutch. South Korea finished seventh in Athens. The hockey tournament starts on Sunday with the women's matches. Men and women will play on alternate days.
The Dutch are in a tough group in the preliminary phase. They open against South Africa and also play former champions Australia and Spain, as well as the Koreans and the Chinese. Defending champions Germany, Argentina, Britain, Japan, New Zealand and United States are in the other group. The top two teams from each group will play for medals. "I think six countries have a chance to win medals and it is going to be really difficult. The level is really close to each other," he said.
"We are trying to focus on the immediate game, not on the medals or the last games." Seven from the current team were part of the Athens campaign where they lost to Germany in the final and Lammers said his women had learnt from that experience. "Of course you are learning more from defeats than from winning games. We learnt a lot of mental lessons (for these Games) about playing a final, playing in the semi-finals."
The Dutch finished among the medals in the last three Olympics but won their only gold in 1984. *Reuters
