Maria Cecilia Rognoni

One of the best hockey players in the world at her peak, Cecilia Rognoni won the silver medal with the Argentina team at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney and a bronze medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics. She was voted best hockey player in the world by the International Hockey Federation in 2002 after Argentina’s victory in the World Cup in Perth.

A commanding defender with a fearsome strike, which she uses at both ends of the field, she has scored more than 50 goals for Argentina. She played club hockey for Club Ciudad de Buenos Aires and several clubs in Europe, including HC Rotterdam in the Netherlands.

When she was only 16, she made her debut in the Argentine First Division. And two years later, she was playing for Las Leonas – the Argentine national team. In 1995 she was recognised as the most promising young hockey player in the country.

Cecilia has played in the first divisions of different countries: Argentina, Germany and The Netherlands, and, thanks to her natural ability, strength and courage, she has been named best player of each division on varying occasions.

She has won gold medals in the 2002 World Cup, the Champions Trophy 2001 and in the Pan American Games. ‘Ceci’ participated in three consecutive Olympic Games: Atlanta 1996, Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004. In the last two, the Argentine National Team won silver and bronze medals respectively.

Cecilia’s talent and determination has been recognised not only in Argentina but also around the world. The year 2002 was the highlight in her sporting career when she was named Best Player of the Champions Trophy and Best Female Player of the Year by the International Hockey Federation.

She is regarded as one of the best hockey defenders of all time and in Argentina, where hockey is the most popular sport for young girls, she has been a role model from an early age.

Although she has been one of the best Argentine hockey players for many years, Cecilia studied hotel and tourism management to be able to continue with a career once she decided to retire from hockey. Recently she established her first travel agency in Argentina.

She was elected as the best woman hockey player in the world in 2002 by the FIH. In 2005 she was separated from the Argentine national field hockey team by the coach Gabriel Minadeo, after she said that many of the players have a place on the team just because of their surname. She came back to the team in 2010, with Carlos Retegui as new coach of the national side. She's actually playing in Dutch team HC Bloemendaal in the second division of the Netherlands.