Alyson Annan

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Olympic medal record
Women's field hockey
Gold	Atlanta 1996	Team competition
Gold	Sydney 2000	Team competition

Alyson Annan OAM (born June 21, 1973 in Wentworthville, New South Wales) is a former field hockey player from Australia, who earned a total number of 230 international caps for the Women's National Team, in which she scored 58 goals. Playing as an attacking midfielder, she was a key member of the squad that won the gold medal at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia, and defended its title successfully four years later at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia.

Known as the "sharpest shooter in international women’s hockey" and the "best female hockey player in the world" during the 1990s, Annan first made history books at the 1998 Commonwealth Games when she became Australia's highest ever goal scorer with 110 goals. With a total number of 149 goals in just 201 international appearances she has what can only be described as a phenomenal goalscoring strike-rate. Such has been their domination since the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain that when the Australians failed to make the final of the Champions Trophy in the Netherlands in 2000 the news was met with disbelief.

Annan first came into the Australian side in 1991, but she later confessed that she did not feel comfortable in the team until the Atlanta Games, where the Hockeyroos won gold. Extraordinarily gifted, Annan was playing for Australia by the time she was 18 years old. The visionary coach Ric Charlesworth recognized her genius. To go with the Atlanta Olympic gold Annan has a Commonwealth Games gold from Kuala Lumpur in 1998, four Champions Trophy winners' medals and a host of gold medals from other international tournaments.

Annan, voted the Best Female Hockey Player in the World in 1999, come over to Holland after the Sydney Olympics, and is sharing a house since then in Amsterdam with her lover, former Dutch hockey captain Carole Thate, who led her side to a bronze medal in Sydney, after having had a relationship with Argentina's field hockey player Maximiliano Caldas. In the Netherlands she played for HC Klein Zwitserland from The Hague. She retired in 2003, becoming the coach of the same team that is competing in the highest Dutch league, called Hoofdklasse. In 2004 she was an assistant of Dutch Head Coach Marc Lammers at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece, where Holland won silver.

In the same year Annan released her own biography called Beyond the limits – The Alyson Annan story, which was written by Nicole Jeffrey. Her story is not without adversity. In her book, Alyson shares her personal story openly. "One of the most important things that I have learned is that failure – whether it is in your career or in your personal life – never is fun. But success doesn’t guarantee happiness. What guarantees happiness, whether you have failed or succeeded, is knowing that you gave it your best effort."

[edit] Reference

• Profile on ABC Australia

Preceded by None	WorldHockey Player of the Year 1998	Succeeded by Natascha Keller
Preceded by Natascha Keller	WorldHockey Player of the Year 2000	Succeeded by Luciana Aymar