Qualification
In 1980, there was an International Federation of Women's Hockey Associations (IFWHA), separate from the predominantly male Fédération Internationale de Hockey (FIH). Because the FIH was the international federation affiliated to the International Olympic Committee, it supervised the Olympic tournament.
The FIH and IFWHA agreed that qualification for the Olympics would be decided by a joint FIH–IFWHA committee based on the results over the previous two years, including the 1978 (FIH) and 1979 (IFWHA) women's world championships. [3]
Five teams qualified to join the host Soviet team: the Netherlands, West Germany, the United States, New Zealand, and Great Britain [4] (taking the place of Wales, England, and Scotland, who had finished 5th, 6th, and 7th respectively in the 1979 tournament [5] ).
However, all five of these teams boycotted to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The United States and West Germany boycotted completely, and while New Zealand, Great Britain and the Netherlands competed in other sports, their hockey governing bodies pulled out.
This threw the tournament into chaos. Subsequently, the organising committee sent out invitations to other countries, [6] though Ireland declined their invitation. [7]
This page is based on this
Wikipedia article Text is available under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.