IIt’s been 20 years since Australia’s Kookaburras men’s ice hockey team won an Olympic gold medal, but the current squad is looking to do better after their bitter silver medal loss to Belgium in an unusually drawn-out penalty shootout in Tokyo, leading some team members to take drastic measures, including amputating fingers.
Two weeks ago, Kookaburras defender Matthew Dawson was taking part in a training match in Perth when another player’s stick hit his hand, leaving his finger bloodied and partially dislodged. Dawson was so devastated he thought his third Olympic match was over before it even began.
“My first thought was, ‘OK, that’s it.’ he told The New York Times this week.“The Olympic dream is over.”
But Dawson consulted a surgeon who offered him two options: either undergo surgery to reattach the tip of his right ring finger, which would require months of recovery with no guarantee of a full recovery, or amputate the finger, which would allow him to play in Paris.
Despite his wife’s warnings not to do anything rash, Dawson went ahead with the surgery. “We all make sacrifices and choices,” he said. “This is a choice I made to get to the Olympics.”
Dawson’s Olympic commitment has attracted significant international media attention in recent days. “To be honest, this story has gotten a lot more coverage than I expected it to get,” he said. he told ABC..
But now that he’s 30 and facing the possibility of missing his final Olympics with the national team, Dawson said he firmly believes it was the right choice. “If the price is to have the tip of my finger removed, then I’ll do it,” he said.
The Kookaburras have long been a powerhouse in the Olympic Games, reaching the podium at every Olympic Games for 20 years, from Barcelona 1992 to London 2012, most notably winning gold at the Athens Games in 2004. This is an unprecedented run of consistency, and the Kookaburras are the only Australian team to win six consecutive Olympic medals in any sport.
But a quarter-final defeat to the Netherlands in Rio brought an end to the winning streak and left the team with much to reflect on, and although the heartbreaking penalty shootout defeat in the Japanese heat was still fresh in their memory, the team returned to the form they had three years ago.
So the Kookaburras arrive in Paris determined to do more than win a silver medal, and they’ll face the depth and breadth of talent in global hockey — last year’s World Cup saw them lose to Germany in the semifinals and to the Netherlands in the third-place playoffs.
Australia open their campaign at Saturday lunchtime against Argentina, the gold medal winners in 2016. Over the next few days they face Belgium in a rematch of the Tokyo final before facing India, New Zealand and Ireland in an even tougher Group B. Australia must finish in the top four to reach the quarter-finals, but the higher they finish the better to avoid facing one of the strong teams in Group A.
Despite Australia having a proud sporting history including 15 Olympic Champions Trophy wins and six Commonwealth Games gold medals, Hockey Australia has struggled to secure commercial support for the team off the pitch.
In January, the team’s goalkeeper, Andrew Charter, lamented on LinkedIn that they had no uniform sponsor ahead of the Olympics. “Today is a sad day for my sport,” the veteran player wrote. “For the first time in my 14 year career I see no major sponsor on the front of our uniforms. Yes, the Kookaburras, one of Australia’s most iconic sports teams, are unable to find a major corporate sponsor with seven months to go until the Paris Olympics.” His post attracted media attention, and in May the team announced that Kookaburra Sports had added them as a uniform sponsor.
Whether it’s amputating fingers or using LinkedIn to find sponsors, kookaburras seem to be doing whatever it takes to win gold in Paris.
