Hockey was not a part of the first three olympics which was conducted between 1896 and 1904. It was first introduced in the year 1908 in the London Olympics. The England hockey team won the gold medal by defeating five other nations. Four teams came from the United Kingdom.

Hockey was debarred in the 1912 olympics, and came back and participated in the Antwerp olympics conducted in the year 1920. As hockey did not have an ecumenical sporting edifice, it was maneuvered from the olympics in 1924 at the Paris Games. In order to fight back the elimination and improve hockey, the International Hockey Federation was established in the same year in Paris. With the help of IHF, the Men’s hockey tournament was permanently included in the olympics from the next game onwards. The first olympics that came after the IHF was in the 1928 olympic games held in Amsterdam.

Since hockey is the national game of the Indians, and the game is said to have originated on the Indian soil, they were reigning hockey for a long time. From 1928 to about 1968, it was only the South Asian teams who won the gold medals at the olympics. All most every gold medal went to either India or Pakistan. And until 1947, the British did not allow India to participate in the olympics, as they were ruling India till that time. It was only after 1968, that slowly other teams across the globe started winning the gold medal at the olympics.

When the Astroturf was introduced in the year 1976, the performance of both the Indian and the Pakistani hockey teams started deteriorating, this is mainly because both these nations used grass to play and neglected to conform themselves to Astroturf play. From then teams like Australia, Zimbabwe, New Zealand and Argentina have won a lot of gold medals at the olympics.

The first women hockey tournament was introduced in the olympics at the Summer Olympics in 1980 at Moscow. And the first olympic field games to be played on artificial turf was in the year 1976 at the Montreal Olympic Games.

Ice hockey tournaments were introduced in the olympics in the year 1920 at the Summer Olympics. Teams from Canada and America have been dominating for many years. If you notice, these two teams are so tough that they dominate each other and one of them wins, they outperform all the other teams across the world.

Both Men’s ice hockey tournament and Women’s ice hockey tournament are scheduled in the 2010, olympics which is to be held at Vancouver and also for the 2014 olympics scheduled to be conducted at Sochi. As on date twelve men’s tournament teams have been accredited to participate in the 2010 olympic tournaments. And there are about eight women’s tournament teams qualified to participate in the games.

NHL, National hockey league governs the entire tournament, the teams and players report the NHL. Their performances are tracked by the National Hockey League.