Rachael Lynch

Fast Facts

Sport: Hockey
Event: Womens
Olympic History: Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020
Year Born: 1986
State Born: VIC

About Rachael

A decade after making her senior international debut, Rachel Lynch finally got her chance to play in her maiden Olympics in Rio 2016 as the Australian goal keeper.

Born in Melbourne, Lynch took up hockey after being selected in the primary schools state team. She placed fourth in the 2005 Junior World Cup in Chile before making her international senior team debut at the 2005 Champions Trophy in the Netherlands.

The goalie has represented Australia at three Commonwealth Games (2010, 2014, 2018), where she has won two golds and one silver. In Dehli 2010, she played her 100th cap for Australia in the gold medal match, where the Aussies were victorious after Lynch saved the most goals in the extra time penalty shootouts.

The Victorian won silver at the 2014 Netherlands World Cup, and was named the Goalkeeper of the Tournament by the International Hockey Federation. That year she was also nominated for International Goal Keeper of the year.

In 2019, Rachael was name Player of the Match when the Hockeyroos beat The Netherlands 1-0 in the FIH Pro League and was also announced as Goalkeeper of the Pro League Grand Final.

Rachael also claimed arguably the biggest individual honour of her career after being named the FIH Goalkeeper of the Year (women) for 2019. 

Off the hockey pitch, Lynch works as a nurse and was on the frontline at Perth's Fiona Stanley Hospital during the peak of COVID-19 in 2020.

Rachael became a two-time Olympian at the Tokyo 2020 games, where her impressible goalkeeping skills were apparent yet again. As the last line of the Australian defence she managed to concede only one goal in the Hockeyroos 5 group stage games against; China, Spain, Japan, New Zealand and Argentina. This set up a quarter-final tie against India, a tense affair that ended Australians' medal contention after a 1-0 loss. Despite this Lynch and the rest of the Australian team achieved a 5th place overall finish in the tournament and conceded the least amount of goals of any team throughout the tournament, a noteworthy achievement for the Australian goalkeeper.