Suzy Petty is in an unusually stressful position. The 27-year-old has forced her way into the Great Britain women’s hockey team. As they are the Olympic champions one might think they should be getting set for Tokyo but, thanks to the condensed, fraught nature of qualification for next year’s Games in hockey, the next few weeks are likely to be the most nerve-racking of her sporting life.
“It is a real pressure to qualify and that’s why I don’t really like talking about it,” Petty says. “We don’t have any other opportunity to qualify. It’s either the European Championships – if you win that, you go – or it’s this Olympic qualifier match.
“We haven’t had a chance to qualify yet, so we’re going out to the Euros to win. If we don’t do that, though, we have to go to the next step. It’s huge. There are two matches back-to-back, Saturday then Sunday, and whoever wins goes.”
To complicate matters further, Petty will go to the European Championships representing England. Any qualification for the Games by that route, with the tournament beginning on 16 August, will be done by a part on behalf of the whole. The Olympic play-offs, however, would be contested as Team GB.
“At the moment, as England, we do see ourselves as the GB team,” Petty says. “As an England team we feel the pressure of qualifying. But we’re a GB programme, so we have talked about those two games. We’ve had past athletes who have been through the process come in and talk us through their experiences.”
The programme Petty mentions is another important factor. Funding from UK Sport is, as with every Olympic discipline, dependent on success. Victory over the course of the summer is imperative not just to confirm the champions’ attendance in Tokyo but to safeguard the health of the sport.
“We’re very focused on keeping our funding,” says Petty, “as in, we need to do well in Tokyo and we know that. The centralised programme has just been the making of the sport. We’re very conscious that we’re so privileged to be out there. It’s made us better as a team and we’re conscious that we want to give all the kids coming through the opportunity to become a full-time athlete.
“Then obviously there’s the part of inspiring all the kids [who won’t turn pro]. We actually played at the Stoop two weeks ago and got 12,000 people, which just shows how far hockey has come in the past few years. It was really amazing and I think, as a squad, we do all that we can to make sure the kids see and want to engage with the sport.”
Petty’s own personal ambitions don’t spring to the fore when she speaks; she is happy to put the collective first. But she knows what a special opportunity an Olympics presents after seeing her housemate, Laura Unsworth, triumph in 2016.
“I lived with Laura before she went to Rio,” Petty says. “I think when you’re not part of it and you’re just watching on television you think, ‘Oh, the Olympics are on; that’s really cool.’
“But when you have actually packed someone’s bags and gone to the airport with them and four weeks later they come back with a medal – and a gold one at that – it changes things. It’s something you don’t actually think is attainable but, when you’re that close, you think, ‘Goodness, I could actually do this.’ To do that, to take part in something I watched when I was two or three years old and to go with such a great group of girls, that would make it really special.”