Lausanne (Switzerland): The International Hockey Federation (FIH) will do away with its Hockey Series events after this year to enable its member associations to focus more on continental qualifiers and championships, the game’s governing body said Tuesday.
Insisting that the inaugural edition of the ongoing FIH Pro League has been a success, the world body said it will stop the Hockey Series events, which also serve as World Cup and Olympic qualifiers, after this year.
The decision was taken at the FIH Executive Board’s first meeting of the year March 15 and 16 at its headquarters here under the chairmanship of President Narinder Batra. Instead, the FIH has decided to give more emphasis on continental tournaments for qualifications in big events like the World Cup and Olympics.
“The FIH Series events will be discontinued after 2019, allowing national associations to focus on participation in continental qualifiers and championships,” FIH said in a statement.
“The FIH will review the World Cup qualification system with more weight given to Continental championship performance,” the statement further added.
The Hockey Series, a tournament started last year, is open to all national teams that are not part of the men’s and women’s FIH Pro League. The FIH has also scheduled three Hockey Series Finals for the men’s and women’s this year with one of the men’s events scheduled to be at Bhubaneswar June 6 to 16.
Besides, the world body has also decided to develop a match-based new world ranking system.
“Developing an individual match-based world ranking system, with the aim of moving away from the current tournament-based system, so that all international matches are meaningful with world ranking points at stake,” FIH added.
“The new match-based rankings system has been developed using the results of all international matches over the past 3 years, and will be run and further improved in the background during 2019, with a target go live date of January 2020.”
FIH monitoring India-IOC situation
New Delhi: After the International Olympic Committee (IOC) wrote to all national federations to hold talks with India regarding the future of the international sports events in the country, a cloud of uncertainty hangs over the FIH Men’s Series Finals which is slated to happen in Bhubaneswar June 6-16 as the world body is ‘monitoring the issue’. “We are monitoring this issue and are in touch with the IOC,” FIH CEO Thierry Weil said. “We will comment further on FIH events planned in India or for which India is bidding as soon as we can.”