The road to Rio 2016 may be a rocky one for the handful of Scottish hopefuls in the present Great Britain Olympic training squads.
At present Chris Grassick, Dan Coultas and Gordon McIntyre are in the men's squad while Morag McLellan, Sarah Robertson, Emily Maguire and goalkeeper Amy Gibson are part of the women's. The training squads are around 30 players in each with English in the overwhelming majority, but they will have to be whittled down to 18 for the Olympic qualifiers in June, so there will be plenty of casualties along the way.
But there is also no guarantee that the Great Britain squads will reach the Olympic Games in Rio, firstly they will have to qualify at the World League semi-finals in June next year. After the host nation and the continental champions are accommodated there are six remaining places and these will be allocated to the top three nations in each of the two semi-finals.
Great Britain women are up against top quality opposition in their semi-final, the likes of Argentina, Germany, China and the United States, all in single figures in the current world rankings. At sixth GB would be expected to qualify, but in the recent Champions Trophy England women finished a disappointing fifth, beating China in a penalty shoot-out after a 1-1 draw.
The men also have a daunting challenge in their qualifier in Antwerp with world number one Australia, hosts Belgium, India and Pakistan in the mix. And with England finishing seventh in their Champions Trophy, the road to Rio is far from guaranteed for the small Scottish contingent.
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