Ahead of next month’s FIBA Women’s Olympic Qualifying Tournaments 2024, FIBA take a look at what happened four years ago on the Road to Tokyo.
According to FIBA, there were 16 teams involved in four groups, although the Tournaments were held across three sites and all in Europe. Belgrade, Serbia was the location for two of the groups, with the others taking place in Bourges, France and in Ostend, Belgium.
There were 10 tickets to Tokyo 2020 on the line – with USA already qualified as the reigning FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup champions and Japan as the Olympic hosts.
USA took all the attention as expected with legends like Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi – they also had eventual Tokyo standout A’ja Wilson on board.
Hosts Serbia also lived up to the hype by grabbing their spot at the ‘Big Show’ in the Japanese capital, but it was Nigeria’s D’Tigress that put their name up in lights. They beat Mozambique in what was always likely to be an African winner-takes-all matchup against Mozambique – with Ezinne Kalu very impressive throughout. That meant their first participation since their 2004 debut.
Nigeria joined Serbia and USA to Tokyo and D’Tigress’ Ezinne Kalu was included in the TISSOT All-Star Five which included Ana Dabovic (Serbia), Nneka Ogwumike (USA), A’ja Wilson (USA), and Leia Dongue (Mozambique)
It was host nation Belgium that wrote the headlines in Ostend as they punched a ticket to the Olympics for the first time. To do so in front of their own fans and a big crowd also made it extra special. Olympic hosts Japan gave a glimpse of the three-point power they would use to eventually take silver at the Games after dropping 17 shots from downtown against the Cats. Meanwhile Canada were the only unbeaten team, with Sweden sinking and missing out.
With Spain and China big favorites to advance and eventually living up to that top billing – with Meng Li scooping MVP honors for the latter, it was always going to boil down to who came out on top between Korea and Great Britain for the last ticket. It was the former that got the job done in what was the vital result of this group, beating the Brits by 82-79 in an absolute thriller. Korea showed they could get it done, while Great Britain departed with a broken heart.
Four years later and all is set with baited breath to see what will go down at the 2024 editions!