Ric Charlesworth is a doctor of medicine and a former captain of the Australian Hockey Team, the Western Australian State Hockey Team and Cricket Team. He played hockey for Australia for a record 16 years and played first class cricket for nearly a decade. He was elected a member of Federal parliament in 1983 and retired 10 years later and took on the position of National Coach of the Australian Women’s Hockey Team from 1993 to 2000. His coaching formula is part of the reason for the sustained success of the team at Atlanta and Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. For 8 consecutive years the team was ranked number one in the world. He won Australian Team Coach of the Year six times in 1994 and from 1996 to 2000. He was then appointed a Master Coach by the International Hockey Federation and is described as one of the world’s best coaches. Ric is the author of three books “The Coach – managing for success”. His second book titled “Staying at the Top” gives his principles of how to get to be the best and more importantly how to stay there. While living in Italy he wrote ‘Shakespeare the Coach’ and did some consulting in Europe with teams from professional rugby and soccer. In 2002, he received an honorary Doctorate of Science at the University of Western Australia and completed a Bachelor of Arts majoring in philosophy and history. He has worked with the Australian Institute of Sport as a mentor coach to 5 national team coaches and was a high performance consultant to the Fremantle Football Club for two years in 2001 and 2002. In 2005, Ric was selected as Western Australia’s greatest ever hockey player and also Western Australia’s greatest ever coach. Between November 2005 and November 2007 he worked as High Performance Manager of New Zealand Cricket then moved to India and worked as Technical Advisor to Indian Hockey through 2008. At the end of 2008 Ric was inducted into the Hockey Australia inaugural Hall of Fame and also became the Head Coach of the Australian Men’s Hockey team the Kookaburras. In 2009 he coached the team to win gold at the Champion’s Trophy in Melbourne and this was followed by gold at the 2010 World Cup in New Delhi and gold at the Commonwealth Games and Champions Trophy. He is the first person to have played in and coached a Gold medal winning World Cup team in hockey. . Ric also has won best Coach of the Year 2010. In 2011 the Kookaburras again secured the Champions Trophy becoming the first team to ever win four consecutive titles in the 34 year history of the event and in December 2012 they made it five in a row! At the London Olympics the team lost in the semi final to Germany and so fell short of the perfect record when securing the bronze medal when they finished off the top of the podium for the first time in four years. Charlesworth retired from coaching after Australia’s triumphant World Cup victory at the 2014 World Cup in the Hague in June last year with the team clear in the rankings as World number one. Two weeks later the team won Gold at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. In four World Cups and three Olympic Games as coach of Australia Charlesworth’s teams won Gold on 6 occasions and once won bronze…a record never equalled in the sport. Ric has just completed his fourth book ‘World’s Best’ which will be released in December.