Olympics hockey facts and stats: Spies, mothers and family firsts

The Hockey Paper takes a sideways look at the Olympic hockey tournament, with 11 offbeat facts and stats

Spy in the camp
There were four GBR teams at the 1908 Olympics, made up of the four home nations. While Reggie Pridmore scored 10 goals – two less than the final tally of the five non-English teams competing – it was Scotland’s Alastair Denniston who went on to raise eyebrows with his off-field career. Eight years after the London Games, he was recruited into the secret intelligence service due to his command of the German language, becoming a forthright expert in cryptoanalysis over the next three decades and key code-cracker in both World Wars. In 1939 he helped set up the crack team which halted the German military Enigma decoding machine in its tracks.

Hungary for success
As far as we are aware, Géza Teleki de Szék is the only Count to play Olympic field hockey. A forward with the Hungarian team during the 1936 Olympics, he later pressed for a truce to end the Second World War. He became a delegate that started peace negotiations in Moscow in the autumn of 1944.

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