The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has nominated Darcy Bourne, a hockey player from the England and Great Britain women’s national team, as an Athlete Role Model (ARM) for the upcoming Youth Olympic Games (31 October–13 November), which will be held for the first time on African soil, in Dakar, the capital city of Senegal.

Uruguay (women) and USA (men) will participate for the very first time in the FIH Hockey Nations Cup 2026. This follows the withdrawals of both Scotland (women) and Wales (men).

In our first edition in December, we invited you to vote on a name for this newsletter, and the results are in. You have officially named it Athlete Corner, and you can find the full breakdown of the vote later in this issue to see just how close it was.  We are back with our second edition, and there is a lot to cover.