They had balance in their lives.Īlthough it was an amateur era, they were absolutely professional in their approach to the sport. I wanted it to portray an era in New Zealand where sport was still played on a purely amateur basis where the men in the New Zealand hockey team also held down full-time jobs and helped raise young families. I didn’t want Striking Gold to be branded as “a hockey book”, or “an Olympics book”. How important was it to you that you cover the social history and context in which all this was happening? And Striking Gold is really a collection of great yarns about a bunch of great Kiwi blokes, who may have come from very different walks of life, but all shared the same passion – to win Olympic gold. As a journalist (now in my 30 th year), my passion has always been people – and telling rich human interest stories.
Hockey was my sporting passion as a kid, and growing up, I was aware New Zealand had won an Olympic gold medal in hockey, but I didn’t know a lot more about the story behind it. It was definitely a dream first book for me to write, in so many ways. Your background is in sports journalism and you’re a self-professed fan of hockey. I asked author Suzanne McFadden a few questions about the book, and what she was hoping to achieve in writing it. In reading the book I’ve learned at least as much about the politics of the era as I have about the sport. So you can imagine that telling the story of a plucky band of Kiwi hockey players who achieve Olympic gold against the odds (in the final they faced an Australian team who had a 13 game winning-streak against them) – is somewhat problematic given the setting.įortunately in Striking gold: New Zealand hockey’s remarkable victory at the 1976 Olympics author and journalist Suzanne McFadden has done a great job of sitting the stories of these individual players in amongst both the history of hockey in New Zealand, but more importantly the political and social context of that time.
This was not our finest hour as a nation. In protest at New Zealand’s attendance at the games and ongoing sporting association with Apartheid South Africa (specifically the All Blacks continuing to tour there), many African nations refuse to take part in the games. It’s 1976 and the Olympic games are being held in Montreal, Canada.
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