Robert Adriaan van der Horst (; born 17 October 1984) is a Dutch former
field hockey
Field hockey is a team sport structured in standard hockey format, in which each team plays with ten outfield players and a goalkeeper. Teams must drive a round hockey ball by hitting it with a hockey stick towards the rival team's shootin ...
player who played as a defender and currently the assistant coach of the first men's team of Oranje-Rood.
He played a total of 272 caps for the
Dutch national team
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
, which makes him the seventh most capped Dutch player of all time. He scored 14 goals in his international career which lasted from 2004 until 2016. The defender was the captain of the national teams that finished fourth at the
2008
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and
2016 Olympics
The 2016 Summer Olympics ( pt, Jogos Olímpicos de Verão de 2016), officially the Games of the XXXI Olympiad ( pt, Jogos da XXXI Olimpíada) and also known as Rio 2016, was an international multi-sport event held from 5 to 21 August 20 ...
and won a silver medal in
2012
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. He played club hockey for
Oranje Zwart
Mixed Hockeyclub Oranje Zwart was a Dutch professional field hockey club located in Eindhoven, North Brabant, which was founded on 1 September 1933. With around 1,700 members – as of 3 May 2006 – it is one of the biggest clubs in the ...
,
Rotterdam
Rotterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Rotte'') is the second largest city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is in the province of South Holland, part of the North Sea mouth of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta, via the ''"N ...
Oranje Zwart
Mixed Hockeyclub Oranje Zwart was a Dutch professional field hockey club located in Eindhoven, North Brabant, which was founded on 1 September 1933. With around 1,700 members – as of 3 May 2006 – it is one of the biggest clubs in the ...
for two years before he got into the first team, in which he played for eight seasons. After those eight seasons, he joined
HC Rotterdam
Hockey Club Rotterdam, commonly known as Rotterdam is a Dutch field hockey club based in Rotterdam, South Holland. It was founded on 16 September 1925.
The first men's team competes on the highest level of the Dutch field hockey league, which is c ...
. He wanted to leave Oranje Zwart after those eight seasons because he felt that he had so much responsibility for his team and club that it was at the expense of his own development as a hockey player. After three seasons with Rotterdam, he returned to Oranje Zwart. After Oranje Zwart merged in 2016 with EMHC he started playing for the newly formed club
HC Oranje-Rood
Hockeyclub Oranje-Rood (), also known as HC Oranje-Rood or simply Oranje-Rood, is a Dutch field hockey club based in Eindhoven, North Brabant. The club was founded on 1 July 2016 as a merger of Oranje Zwart and EMHC.
In May 2019, the first wom ...
. In April 2019 van der Horst announced he would retire at the end of the season.
International career
He made his debut for the
Dutch national team
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
Lahore
Lahore ( ; pnb, ; ur, ) is the second most populous city in Pakistan after Karachi and 26th most populous city in the world, with a population of over 13 million. It is the capital of the province of Punjab where it is the largest ...
. He was named the 2005 Young Player of the Year and the 2015 Player of the Year by the
International Hockey Federation
The Fédération Internationale de Hockey (English: International Hockey Federation), commonly known by the acronym FIH, is the international governing body of field hockey and indoor field hockey. Its headquarters are in Lausanne, Switzerland. ...
, which also placed him on the 2007 All-Star team. He was selected as player of the tournament at the 2007 EuroHockey Nations Championship. During his long international career, he played in three
Summer Olympics
The Summer Olympic Games (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques d'été), also known as the Games of the Olympiad, and often referred to as the Summer Olympics, is a major international multi-sport event normally held once every four years. The ina ...
, three World Cups and six EuroHockey Championships. In 2016, the head coach of the national team announced he would no longer be called up, so the 2016 Summer Olympics was his last tournament with the national team.
Coaching career
After van der Horst announced his retirement as a player it was announced that he would become the new head coach of his former club's first men's team Oranje-Rood. After three years as the head coach, he took a step back and switched roles with the assistant coach.
Personal life
He was born and raised in
Eindhoven
Eindhoven () is a city and municipality in the Netherlands, located in the southern province of North Brabant of which it is its largest. With a population of 238,326 on 1 January 2022,
Honours
Club
Oranje Zwart
*
Hoofdklasse
The Vierde Divisie, formerly known as Hoofdklasse () is the second-highest league of amateur football in the Netherlands, and the fifth tier in general.
Background
The league is divided into two sections: Saturday and Sunday. This is a result of ...
: 2004–05, 2013–14, 2014–15, 2015–16
*
Euro Hockey League
The Euro Hockey League is an annual men's field hockey cup competition organized by the EHF for the very top field hockey clubs in Europe. The competition was launched at the start of the 2007-08 field hockey season when it merged and replaced th ...
2007
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,
2015
File:2015 Events Collage new.png, From top left, clockwise: Civil service in remembrance of November 2015 Paris attacks; Germanwings Flight 9525 was purposely crashed into the French Alps; the rubble of residences in Kathmandu following the April ...
2012–13
1 (one, unit, unity) is a number representing a single or the only entity. 1 is also a numerical digit and represents a single unit of counting or measurement. For example, a line segment of ''unit length'' is a line segment of length 1. ...