HOCKEY
Carterton’s Dane Lett is off to his second Olympic Games, being named yesterday in the Black Sticks squad to head to Paris next month.
The 128-test international has impressed in recent tournaments and led the defence in the team’s unbeaten run at the Nations Cup in Poland. That resulted in a victory in the final over the Olympic hosts France in a shootout after the game finished 1–1.
Lett, 33, first played for the Black Sticks in a series against Japan in 2014, but selectors then overlooked him, and it would be another three years before he was recalled.
A silver medal at the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games is a highlight, followed by selection for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, which were postponed a year because of the covid-19 pandemic.
The Black Sticks failed to live up to expectations in Tokyo, missing the quarterfinals and finishing a disappointing ninth. Lett was also a member of the side that finished a lowly fifth at the 2022 Commonwealth Games.
The team showed some improvement in finishing seventh, equalling New Zealand’s best-ever finish at a World Cup in India in 2023.
