Host country United Kingdom Dates 30 July – 11 August Venue(s) Riverbank Arena | City London Teams 12 Champions Germany (4th title) | |
 | ||
The men's field hockey tournament at the 2012 Summer Olympics was the 22nd edition of the field hockey event for men at the Summer Olympic Games. It was held over a thirteen-day period beginning on 30 July, and culminating with the medal finals on 11 August. All games were played at the Riverbank Arena within the Olympic Park in London, United Kingdom.
Contents
Defending champions Germany won the gold medal for the fourth time after defeating the Netherlands 2–1 in the final. Australia won the bronze medal by defeating Great Britain 3–1.
Competition format
The twelve teams in the tournament were divided into two pools of six, with each team initially playing round-robin games within their pool. Following the completion of the round-robin, the top two teams from each pool advance to the semi-finals. All other teams play classification matches to determine the final tournament rankings. The two semi-final winners meet for the gold medal match, while the semi-final losers play in the bronze medal match.
Qualification
Each of the continental champions from five federations and host received an automatic berth. The European and Oceanian federations received two and one extra quotas respectively based upon the FIH World Rankings at the completion of the 2010 World Cup. In addition to the three teams qualifying through the Olympic Qualifying Tournaments, the following twelve teams, shown with final pre-tournament rankings, competed in this tournament.
^1 – Great Britain automatically qualified as host nation, therefore the berth obtained by England as third placed team at the 2011 EuroHockey Nations Championship was given to fourth placed team Belgium. ^2 – South Africa won the African qualifier tournament but gave up their automatic berth on the premise that they should play a qualifier having deemed the African tournament as sub-standard. Eventually they won the Qualification Tournament 3. Instead, Spain was invited as the highest ranked team not already qualified after the conclusion of the continental championships.Umpires
The FIH announced the list of umpires on 3 January 2012:
Results
All times are British Summer Time (UTC+01:00)''
Pool A
Advanced to semifinals
Pool B
Advanced to semifinals