It is one of those crisp winter days that Zimbabwe is famous for. There is not a cloud in the sky, the ground is hard and the grass brown under the thunder of hockey boots. On the touchline, Trish Davies is knee deep in the sport she loves. Here, at Watershed College—a private school in Marondera, 60 kilometers from Harare—Davies barks instructions to her team, Chisipite Girls, as her charges battle to draw.
It has been more than 30 African winters since Davies and her teammates tasted sweet triumph against the odds in Moscow in one of the world’s great sporting stories. They called them the Golden Girls—the team that won glory for their fledgling country and partied in the Kremlin afterwards.
As the slick London Olympics unfolded on television, 55-year-old Davies watched with warm and fond memories of another Olympics in a far off world.
It was May 1980; Zimbabwe was just weeks old and the Russians were in Harare looking for a favor. Most of the country’s hockey players laughed when they heard Russia wanted to fly them to take part in the Olympics—surely not?
For the Russians it was no joke. Their Olympics in Moscow was in disarray. Most of the world boycotted the Games in protest against Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan. The Russians had toured the world, looking for replacements and wanted Zimbabwe to send a team to make up the numbers in the first ever women’s field hockey event.
“Like any other sport, politics interferes. Whoever is in power is there because he deserves to be there,” says Davies.
“Russia was a top side, England didn’t come, there were quite a few countries that didn’t come, even the USA, that’s their tough luck.”
In a matter of weeks, Zimbabwe trained a 15-strong team to travel to take on hockey teams which had been training for years. In the context of the time, it was even more remarkable; on April 18, just weeks before, Bob Marley sang at Rufaro Stadium in Harare of revolutionaries and Africans liberating Zimbabwe, to a sea of clenched fists, as the union flag came down on colonial rule. Now, here was an all-white team, playing a game with colonial roots as deep as an oak tree, representing the new nation.
On July 8, less than two weeks before the Olympics, the team boarded a World War II Dakota cargo plane at Manyame Air Force base in Harare. The plane stank because it had been used to transport meat.
“We boarded a cargo aircraft together with four members of the Zimbabwe under-23 soccer team who had been invited to the Games. Team spirit started at the airport, where we shared everything we had, including drinking water from the same bottle. The football players including, Shepherd Murape, turned out to be our best supporters,” player-coach, Anthea Stewart remembers.
“It was the first time I had boarded a Dakota, we sat opposite each other,” Davies laughs.
The plane touched down in Zambia where a Russian Aeroflot passenger plane flew the team to a sunny Olympics in Moscow.
“It was quite frightening, all the cabin crew were dressed in khaki and no-one smiled,” says Brenda Howden, who played right half.
Once there, the Zimbabweans heard they were to play on a new surface called astroturf.
“When we left we didn’t know how to play on astroturf. We were just honored to be there playing for the country…For a start, it was the first time hockey had ever been played at the Olympics, two, Zimbabwe was in it. Everyone of our sportsmen came to see us… it was such an amazing feeling,” says Davies.
The team had to rush out to buy new boots, for a new surface, before the first game against Poland in the round robin tournament.
“That first match was very nerve-wracking because we had not played on that kind of turf, we didn’t know how the opposition was going to play. We had a different style of hockey to the overseas teams. We had very much possession style of hockey. They were a lot quicker than us. With us playing that kind of hockey, that’s how we eventually managed to win gold,” says Davies.
Zimbabwe thrashed Poland 4-0 and in the next game was held 2-2 by Czechoslovakia; then, the hosts, Russia, one of the favorites for the gold. Zimbabwe won 2-0.
“We beat Russia, that was the biggest thing because they had been training for four years and we had been training for just three months,” says Davies
There was a draw against India, then the last game against one of the strongest teams in the tournament. Back home, in Zimbabwe, people took radios to work so they could listen to the game.
“We played Austria in the final match; we had to win to get gold. If we had drawn, we would have silver. By half time we were up 3-0, we sort of knew then that it was ours. During the second half we were smiling a lot, but playing a bit of defensive hockey. We weren’t gonna let them come near us,” she says.
Pat McKillop, who later became a golfer for Matabeleland, scored twice in the final. Overall, the housewife from Bulawayo, who had just turned 24, scored half of Zimbabwe’s 12 goals.
“Pat was a short corner specialist and used to ram them into the back of the net. She had such composure on the field and was a huge role model for me,” says Howden.
The final whistle went and Zimbabwe had won 4-1. The team danced around the pitch with tears streaming down their faces as supporters and fellow Olympians in the stands chanted: “Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe!”
“It was amazing, absolutely amazing, you couldn’t believe it,” says Davies.
Even more amazing was that the referee sprinted off the pitch, after blowing the final whistle, and returned with a bottle of champagne that she popped and passed around the winning team. You could imagine the Olympic committee would take a very dim view of this in 2012.
News agencies reported that some of the members from the victorious team, between gulps of champagne, shouted: “Pamberi ne Jongwe.” It means ‘forward the cockerel’—the symbol of the ruling party, ZANU PF—in ChiShona which is the majority language in Zimbabwe. This report drew a ripple of laughter when Parliament, back in Harare, paused to announce the victory over Austria. This was indeed another world.
The fairy tale was complete as the captain Ann Grant, the 25-year-old bookkeeper from Harare, led her team to the podium to collect the gold medal. Before they left Moscow, the team rubbed shoulders with fellow gold medallists, including Sebastian Coe and Daley Thompson, at a party at the Palace of Congresses in the Kremlin.
They flew home to a crowd of family and friends at Harare Airport. Prime Minister Robert Mugabe, who had been in charge of Zimbabwe for less than two months, saw the surprise win as fillip for the spirit of his new nation.
“We went to his house, it was an afternoon event, he [Mugabe] put on a lovely show for us. It was an honor for the country, we weren’t expecting anything, nothing, none of us were professionals, and we had done it for the country. Sportsmen, that’s how they see it.”
A cheerful Davies, who works in accounts in Harare, says she was thin when she played in Moscow and claims anyone who saw her then wouldn’t recognise her now. Davies is one of a handful of the team of 1980 to remain in Zimbabwe—the rest are scattered from Durban to Dubai.
“Tell you what; I am just coming back to hockey now. I’m not a professional, I have been doing bowling of late,” she says.
“I’m quite happy to come back, it was quite pleasing to come back and help people to play the game.”
As Zimbabwe went into economic meltdown all sports suffered, including hockey. The country is now rebuilding its showcase, Khumalo Hockey Stadium, in Bulawayo, in the hope of staging more tournaments.
“It is getting better now. Hockey is getting back. There was a stage where it had gone right down, especially in the schools, from the schools I think it can now grow,” says Davies.
The Olympic event itself has grown out of proportion. Davies and her team played purely for the love of the game; athletes these days play for money as well as glory. While there was a United States boycott in 1980 over Afghanistan—there has been no such talk in 2012, despite the US, Britain and a dozen other countries which still have troops in the country. It is funny how times change.