London's Olympic Park to host Hockey Champions Trophy

London: England's Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park here will host the men's Hockey Champions Trophy in June, officially kicking off the sport's Olympic celebrations, the International Hockey Federation (FIH) said on Monday.

The Last international event before the Rio Olympic Games, Champions Trophy will see Australia, Belgium, Germany, Great Britain, India and Korea go head to head as they battle for supremacy at the Lee Valley Hockey and Tennis Centre here from June 10 to 17.

Sports fans will be able to experience two weeks of action-packed, world-class hockey, with the women's Hockey Champions Trophy taking place immediately after the men's event from June 18-26.

FIH CEO Kelly Fairweather said: "Following the hugely successful 2012 Olympic Games and more recently the Unibet EuroHockey Championships held in this venue we know that England Hockey and all of their partners will truly embrace the FIH Hockey Revolution's vision of creating innovative and exciting events for our fans. This is key to our aim of making hockey a global game that inspires the next generation."

He continued: "This is the first FIH event to be held here as part of a three event series in addition to the 2017 men's Hockey World League Semi-Final and the women's Hockey World Cup in 2018."

The opening day will see hosts Great Britain, currently ranked fourth in the FIH World Rankings, start their campaign against world's No 1 Australia, who are also the reigning World Cup and World League champions.

Reigning Olympic and defending champions Germany (ranked third) will then clash with Hero Hockey World League Final 2015 runners-up Belgium (ranked fifth) on June 11th.

A rerun of the 2014 Hero Hockey Champions Trophy semi-final between Germany and Australia is also on the cards on June 13th, before the all-Asian derby between 2014 Asian Games champions India (ranked seventh) and 2014 Champions Challenge winners Korea (ranked ninth) takes place the following day.

The round-robin games will conclude on June 16 before the classification games begin the next day, with the final taking place on June 17.