EXCLUSIVE: 'Not at all' - FIH CEO says Hockey5s will not replace 11-a-side at the Olympics
FIH Hockey5s event concluded in Lausanne on Sunday. Like scrolling through reels on social media, 22 matches involving seven nations across the men and women sections were wrapped up in just two days. While the event kept most of the old-school purists away, FIH believes the sport earned some new fans, who parked their cars along the Lac Leman (Lake Geneva) to walk across to Place de la Navigation, a concourse turned into a Hockey5s field. That's perhaps the idea of Hockey5s. Asking just 20 minutes from fans to watch a complete game in the middle of a city, TikTok style - just watch and scroll. But the CEO of International Hockey Federation (FIH), Thierry Weil, says the bigger picture is to woo countries who don't play the sport at all -- by way of low-cost infrastructure, smaller duration of games, fewer players and minimal-to-no logistical nightmares.
