Belgian captain Thierry Renaer has been at the heart of his team’s impressive performances in 2005

Renaer revives Belgium’s fortunes 

Defender Thierry Renaer has represented Belgium for 11 years, but winning a bronze medal at the Sahara Hockey Champions Challenge in Egypt was one of the highlights of his career. Jean-Francois Jourdain works for the Brussels daily La Libre Belgique. He has covered football and hockey extensively for the newspaper. 

During the recent Sahara Hockey Champions Challenge in Alexandria, Belgium provided the biggest surprise of the tournament. 

Invited only at the end of January, after New-Zealand opted out of their entitlement to play in the tournament, the focus of the Red Devils was to improve on their last showing in 2001 in Kuala Lumpur, when the team lost all of its matches.

It was the time when their South African coach, Giles Bonnet, started structuring a new team. Time has changed since the terrible disillusionment of Madrid a year ago, where they lost out on qualifying for the Olympic Games 14 seconds before the end of the match against South Africa. 

Under the leadership of their new captain, Thierry Renaer, Belgium started again. 

Renaer was born in Leuven 29 years ago and has played for his home town club the whole of his career. When he was young, there were no reasons for him to start hockey: his parents never played the sport. 

“In fact, some friends introduced my mother to hockey. She first registered my sister Christine and I. My two young brothers, Nicolas and Audry (an Under 21 international) started hockey much later,” Thierry says. 

In the beginning, hockey was only a pastime for Thierry. When he was in the Under 16 team of his club and trained by the former Red Devil Gérald Dewamme, he started to see it another way. 

“It's probably Gérald who had a decisive influence on my international career, along with my mother of course. I also learned a lot when I was watching the stars of the Belgium team in the early 1990s, like Michel Van Oost and Robert Gucassoff. It's the base of my hockey.” 

Thierry has never played for another club, and this notwithstanding some offers from clubs outside Belgium. Tilburg, for example, made him an attractive offer to play in the Netherlands. 

“I was still a student at this moment and in my opinion it was very difficult to combine sport at a high level and university. I was not a good student and my only solution was to work very hard to get results. Other Belgium teams don’t try to insist too much for me to change clubs. They know well that my club is Leuven where I'm too attached to change.” 

It's probably this loyalty which prevents Thierry from achieving a better track record. 

To date, he’s never won a Belgium championship, although he hopes to be champion this year with his club where two Polish brothers, Arthur and Piotr Mikula, are among the stars. 

His best results with Leuven are as two times winner of the Belgium Cup and the Champions Cup B title in Brest (2000). Individual awards have been more forthcoming, with Thierry a three-time winner of the Golden Stick for Belgium’s best player. 

The most important moments of his hockey playing career are with the Belgium national team however, where he made his debut in 1994 in Barcelona during a 4-Nation tournament against England.  With 272 caps and 12 goals for the Belgian national team, he is still a long way off from the record of Marc Coudron (358). 

He has played in two World Cups (Sydney in 1994 and Kuala Lumpur in 2002) and hopes to attend a third one next year, if the Red Devils finish in the top six in Leipzig at the next European Championship. 

His best moment was probably in 2001 in Edinburgh at the World Cup qualifier. 

”We didn’t have the situation under control. The only solution for our qualification was that France didn't beat Bangladesh by more than four goals. At half time, it was already 4-0 for France. And believe it or not, Bangladesh won the second half with the Belgium team madly supporting them.” 

“In Madrid last year, there were some very intense moments with the team, but it is also far and away my worst experience with the national team. There were some others bad moments: Barcelona in 1996, where we also missed qualification for the Games with a lot of injured players. 

“The year after, in Kuala Lumpur, we missed our qualification for the World Cup seven minutes before the end of our last match. Finally in 2000 in Osaka, with a team capable of performing, we completely missed out.” 

What does the captain of Belgium like and dislike in the hockey world? 

 “I like the fact that it's a team sport, where relationships are good from the start and the same in good and bad periods. I really don't like pretentious people, which we find unfortunately from time to time in the hockey family. 

“Outside hockey, I like to build and develop projects and to learn more and more new things. I detest it when I focus on a goal and am then unable to realise it.” 

A great amateur windsurfer, Thierry is a fan of Robby Naish, former world champion in this speciality. In the hockey world, he greatly admired the Dutch team in the 1990s that contained players such as Stefan Veen, Marc Delissen and Floris-Jan Bovelander. 

And what if Thierry had the chance to start his hockey career again? 

“First of all, I'd do more training to improve my speed before my endurance. Today, speed is extremely important, and it's always possible to maintain your endurance. Not so long ago, I had the reputation of making at least one big mistake in each match but I learned to stabilise the way I play. 

Thierry is unsure how long he intends continuing his role with the national team, preferring to set shorter term goals than longer ones. 

“Today, I go step by step without thinking about the long term. My first idea was to stop at 30, but I’m not sure. First of all, I have to see if my body can still take the strain. 

“Secondly, I have to be important to the team and last but not least, I have to decide if it’s still possible to combine hockey with my professional career. In Alexandria, I arrived at 3.30am the day of the first match. Our Olympic Committee doesn't want a repeat of that situation. For now, my next objective is Leipzig (11th European Nations Cup), and after that, we will see.”