T&T's international hockey umpire Ayanna Mc Clean will be in charge of the FIH Hockey Olympic Qualifier matches in London on Saturday when the host Great Britain battles Malaysia men and Chile women over the next two days.
Mc Lean will be part of a four-member officiating team which also includes Belgium's Laurine Del Forge, Peter Wright of South Africa, and Germany's Christian Blasch
Last weekend, six nations secured berths for next year’s global sporting showpiece, with Australia women, China women, Spain’s women, and men, Netherlands men and Canada men all winning their respective two-game play-offs over three dramatic days of action.
With ten teams having already achieved Olympic qualification by winning their respective continental championships, there are now just eight - four men, four women - of the 24 Olympic tickets unassigned, something that will be resolved over this weekend.
The duo of Mc Clean and Reyah Richardson, both former national defenders have already been appointed to fly this country’s flag high at next year’s Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan after being handed Federation International Hockey (FIH) appointments.
When the FIH revealed the list of officials appointed for the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, Richardson was named as one of the 14 Technical Officials, and only one of three from the Pan American region along with Argentine Adrian Della Mattia, and USA’s Rene Zelkin.
Mc Clean, who officiated at the 2018 Commonwealth Games final in Gold Coast Australia and has officiated in the FIH World League this season was one of 14 umpires selected for the women’s hockey competition, and one of four from the Pan American region,and only the second from this country behind Roger St Rose who officiated at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
The three other umpires from the Pan American zone selected were Argentines’, Carolina De La Fuente and Irene Presenqui, and USA’s Maggie Giddens
In accordance with the agreed guidelines and processes of FIH, all appointed officials come from the FIH Pro League panels as these are the top-rated officials.
While performance was the primary selection criteria, the Officials Committee also looked, as a secondary consideration, at the geographic spread of the officials to ensure that all continents are represented.
As a further demonstration of FIH’s “Equally Amazing” policy, the Technical Officials will work across both genders’ matches. Furthermore, while on field Umpires will be the same gender as the match, Video Umpires may be the other gender as has been successfully implemented during the FIH Pro League this year.
The 2020 Olympic hockey tournaments will be staged in Japan’s capital city from 25 July to 7 August next year.