Midweek Mashup – Great Britain hockey, 2000 Olympics

A change of direction today, another piece focusing on Olympic activity ahead of the commencement of the Paris games at the end of this month – see here for a recent Andy Murray 2012 piece.

It might come as a surprise to learn that this year marks the 40th anniversary of adidas supplying apparel for the Great Britain Olympic team. Designing a range of articles across a number of sports is not an easy task and we are building up to a comprehensive piece looking at a particular Olympics but today we will look at something that should please mix-and-match enthusiasts.

A fortnight ago, we covered France’s various kit combinations as they won Euro 2000 and this is also concerned with the same summer and the swapping of blue, white and red items.

Team GB finished third in the men’s field hockey in 1984 and won in 1988 while the women’s team earned bronze in 1992 and were just outside the medals in 1996. Unfortunately for them, the 2000 Olympics in Sydney did not see them on the podium in either gender – sixth in the men’s and eighth in the women’s – but they deserve a commendation for their kit rotation.

The general design was not unlike that on the sleeves of adidas’s football roster in 2000, the outside adidas stripes dispersing outwards as trim. The men’s team started off in a historical France away/Russia-style look of white shirts, blue shorts and red socks against the eventual champions, the Netherlands (a nice orange-white-sky blue adidas ensemble), and used the same against Pakistan (green-white-white).

Against the all-yellow of Malaysia, they wore red shirts and socks with white shorts and then white-white-blue against Canada’s red-black-red (incidentally, the Canadian shirt was the same design as the France football team). Two games against Germany (white-black-red) – including the fifth/sixth-place playoff – had them in red-white-blue sandwiching another white-blue-red appearance against India’s all-sky blue.

Hosts Australia, in traditional gold-green-gold were first up for the women’s team, who appeared in a Hamburg-like white shirts, red skirts and blue socks. The jerseys used had a different collar style compared to the men’s team, while the shorter sleeves did not have contrast panelling.

Red-blue-red was worn against Argentina (sky/white stripes-white-black) and later South Africa (white-green-green) and Germany (gold dresses, black socks), with all-red against Korea (white-blue-blue) and red-blue-blue against Spain (white-white-red).

That makes a total of eight different kit combinations used out of a possible total of 12, which is impressive. Red-red-blue, white-red-red, white-blue-blue and white-white-red were the only missing options.