KARACHI, Aug 8: Olympics are the zenith of sports. All other competitions — be it world championships, continental cups or regional contests — pale into insignificance compared to the extravaganza which is often dubbed as the ‘greatest show on earth.’

Among the various disciplines contested at the Games, field hockey has come a long way which is evident from the fact that it is commemorating 100 years of its launch in the Olympic movement at the Beijing Games.

Introduced as one of the disciplines at the London Olympiad in 1908, hockey has a long, glittering history. There was not a great rush of entries at the inaugural event in London as England duly won the gold, finishing ahead of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, France and Germany.

Earlier, field hockey did not feature as part of the preceding three Olympic Games — at Athens in 1896, Paris in 1900 and St. Louis in 1904.

Unfortunately, hockey could not find a place at the Stockholm Games four years later in 1912 as no suitable venue was available for the event. Again with the invention of World War I, the Olympics went into limbo until 1920.

Hockey came back at the Antwerp Olympics in 1920 only to be dropped from Paris Games in 1924 for want of international governing body of the game which was made mandatory by the IOC. Subsequently, the International Hockey Federation (FIH) was founded and hockey returned at the Amsterdam Olympics in 1928.

The sport was part of Olympics at Los Angeles in 1932 and also at Berlin in 1936. There were no Games in 1940 and 1944 owing to World War II but when the Games resumed in 1948, hockey had made giant strides.

It is a tribute to the intensity of Olympic competition that no team since the Indians in 1956 have gone to the Games and successfully defended their title for six successive times. True, the Indians came back to win in 1964 and again in 1980, but their monopoly was long over.

As far as Pakistan was concerned, Friday Sept 9, 1960, was a red-letter day in the history of sports when hockey team’s solitary goal triumph over arch-rivals India in the Rome Olympic final put the country on international map.

Inside left Naseer Bunda scored the decisive goal which ended India’s 32-year domination as field hockey world champions. Bunda was awarded ‘Helms Trophy’ and was conferred upon the title of ‘Best Player in the World’.

The Olympic gold medal feat laid a solid foundation as Pakistan hockey team went on to achieve a number of distinctions in the years that followed.

The men in green repeated the Rome feat twice at Mexico in 1968, thanks to Asad Malik’s 56th minute decisive goal, and at Los Angeles in 1984, in addition to claiming three silvers (1956, 1964, 1972) and two bronze (1976, 1992) medals in the Olympics.

The path to Olympic glory has never been easy for the competing teams. Greatest of hockey playing nations in the world have faced difficulties in capturing the ultimate crown at the Olympics. For instance, reigning champions Australia lifted the Olympic title at Athens in 2004 after rampaging around the world for best part of some four decades.

The Dutch, on the other hand, graced the winner’s podium in 1996 at Atlanta and retained the title again four years later at Sydney.

Hockey, meanwhile, entered the era of artificial turf at the 1976 Olympics. The game also witnessed some lows, among them the 1972 Munich Olympics and the 1980 Moscow Games. However, in a landmark decision, women’s hockey was introduced at the Moscow Olympics in 1980.

Experts, however, admit that no Pakistan team can ever be written off. Citing an example, they said the men in green were written off after a dismal showing in Los Angeles only to sprint their way to gold in their last two matches.

True, hockey has come a long way and new chapters are surely to be written in Beijing.