Zimbabwe women's national field hockey team at the 1980 Summer Olympics

Zimbabwe's subsequent victory in the round-robin tournament with three wins and two draws was regarded as a huge upset, particularly considering the team's lack of preparation and experience; it has been called an "irresistible fairy story".

Dubbed the "Golden Girls" by the media of Zimbabwe, they were met by cheering crowds on their return home, and were briefly national celebrities.

[n 1] Pre-tournament favourites included Australia, the Netherlands and West Germany, but the American-led Western boycott of the Moscow Olympics led to these teams and others withdrawing, leaving only the Soviets in the women's hockey event.

Moscow marked the southern African nation's return to the Olympics after 16 years; as Rhodesia it had been excluded from the 1968, 1972 and 1976 Games for political reasons following the mostly white government's declaration of independence from Britain in 1965.

[5] Entirely amateur, the team mostly comprised players with professions unrelated to sport—Grant, for example, was a bookkeeper, while Boxall was an operations clerk in the Air Force of Zimbabwe.

[3] Audrey Palmer, a seasoned hockey official and referee who had played for Rhodesia from 1953 to 1961, travelled with the team as a medic, trainer and general supervisor.

[6][5] The squad left on 7 July, travelling first to the Zambian capital Lusaka and then to Luanda in Angola,[7] from where they flew to Moscow on an aircraft usually used for freighting meat.

The other competitors were Austria, Czechoslovakia, India, Poland and the USSR; apart from the Soviets, all of these teams were competing as a result of the boycott, having failed to qualify initially.

[9] The players' lack of preparation and unfamiliarity with artificial turf—"none of us had ever seen it before", Chick recalled[9]—were offset by what several members of the squad have described as a very strong team spirit.

[11] According to Glen Byrom, covering the event for the Herald newspaper, the Zimbabweans appeared nervous during the opening stages of the game, and were fortunate not to go behind after 15 minutes, when Austria missed a clear chance.

Austria's Brigitte Kindler equalised two minutes later from a penalty stroke, flicking the ball beyond Zimbabwean goalkeeper Sarah English into the top-left corner of the goal.

[11] With 50 of the match's 70 minutes gone, McKillop powerfully stroked a short corner that deflected off an opposing player's stick and flew high into the net to give Zimbabwe the lead.

Byrom reported "incredible scenes of unrestrained joy" at the final buzzer—"the Zimbabweans, tears streaming from their eyes, danced about the field hugging and kissing each other".

Each member of the team was promised an ox by the Prime Minister's wife Sally, but ultimately received a polystyrene package of meat instead at a ceremony hosted by Mrs Mugabe.

[8] While acknowledging this to an extent, Cathy Harris asserted in her 2008 retrospective on the team, published in The Sunday Times, that the victory still deserved to be recognised as a great achievement.