Belgium hockey’s golden boys still want everything the sport has to offer Premium

Belgium hockey stars Arthur Van Doren and Alexander Hendrickx strive for more glory, targeting World Cup and Olympic success.

They first came calling together more than a decade ago, as kids finding their way in top-grade hockey — a world removed from being legends of the game. Cue 2026 and Alexander Hendrickx and Arthur Van Doren have a trophy cabinet overflowing with everything that is to be won in the sport.

They are still as exuberant, excited and enthusiastic as teenagers having their moment in the sun, old warhorses of the Belgium team that fake offence at ‘old’, laugh at their own jokes and complete each other’s sentences. They might be on the wrong side of 30, when teams start looking at replacements, but remain key to the Red Lions’ plans of reclaiming their dominance.

Down years

The last couple of years haven’t been great vis-a-vis their own high standards. Belgium failed to make the semifinals at both the Paris Olympics and the 2025 European Championships, and the two are among the very few to continue, accepting both revised roles in the side and the challenge of keeping pace with the newcomers.

Hendrickx and Van Doren, the defender duo that first visited India for the 2013 Junior World Cup, spent almost two months in the country before heading home after the Pro League games in Rourkela. During this period, they won the Hockey India League with Vedanta Kalinga Lancers and remained unbeaten in the four Pro League outings, Hendrickx going second on the goalscorers’ table with nine so far in eight matches.

“The longest we’ve been on the road was at the beginning of the Pro League season, about five weeks, in different countries. I think we toured the whole world in those five weeks. Now we have been seven weeks in one country. And it always helps if you’re winning; then you feel better about it and you’re happier to be anywhere,” Hendrickx — at 32 a year older, but you wouldn’t know it from their demeanours — quipped.