Last updated: 14/05/08
Panter aiming for a medal in Beijing

In our final Road to Beijing interview George Kotschy caught up with Anne Panter of the Great Britain women’s hockey team.

May is a stressful time for every student; with exams, essay deadlines and dissertations looming large and it’s an equally busy time for 23 year-old Loughborough Maths and Economic student Anne Panter. Unlike her fellow academics though, Anne is not fretting about the result she wants in her degree. She is flying out to Cologne with her club side Leicester to compete in the European Championships and preparing for the Beijing Olympics with the Great Britain team.

Anne has deferred her exams until next year to allow her to prepare for the Olympics, explaining “the final selection for Beijing is done at the end of June so I didn’t want to be worrying about exams that close to the selection.” But Anne has other things on her mind as she attempts to help her club side go one better than last year in the European Championships by winning the competition.

Anne’s progression to playing at the elite level of European hockey and competing for a place in the Great Britain Olympic team is the latest chapter in a passion-filled career that began at the age of 9. Anne joined national league division two outfit Kettering Hockey Club at the age of 13 and then moved on to Premier League side Leicester where she won the league last year. Anne attributes this success to her parents and, most of all, her “hockey fanatic” P.E. teacher, an England junior team goalkeeping coach.

Having reached the high standard she now enjoys, Anne admits it is tough to balance a student life with training and preparing for hockey. She trains three days a week with the GB squad at Bisham Abbey and, with individual strength and speed workouts as well as club training, she undertakes a total of 11-12 sessions a week. Anne admits that, with it being an Olympic year, her club have consequently missed out; “I’ve managed to play in three games and we’ve only done two weeks of club training prior to this tournament.”

With such a heavy training schedule it is vital, especially with a degree as challenging as Maths and Economics, that Anne has the support of her lecturers and tutors. Fortunately Anne’s tutors “have been really understanding. I spoke to them about it and they’ve just let me suspend all my exams and stuff until next year so they’ve been really supportive over it all.”

With her exams suspended Anne is free to concentrate on Beijing in August. She explains that the team’s preparations for the competition will include warm weather training, 10 days at a training camp in Macaw and heat chamber sessions during which the climate can be controlled in a small room containing treadmills and exercise bikes.

With such a young team heading to the Olympics (the average age is 22), Anne is philosophical but optimistic about their chances this summer; “I think it will be a learning curve but if we play at our best we could sneak a medal. It’s a case of us playing to our potential every game.” She is also well aware that Holland will be the team to beat in China; “They’re ranked number one in the world and they’re a very difficult team to overcome.”

Beyond this summer, the obvious goal is the hugely exciting opportunity to play in the first Olympics in London in over sixty years. Anne states that the future is bright for British hockey whatever happens this summer; “The thought of playing in an Olympics in your own country is massive. Obviously we’re going to Beijing with aspirations there but also, in four years time I think we’ll be in a good position to be challenging for the gold medal.”