Kate Walsh

Progress towards 2012

It's getting really exciting now, but it's quite a nervy time. There's a 30-woman squad at the moment and that has got to be cut down to 16 for 2012. So at the moment we're just focusing on training hard, pushing each other and not looking too far ahead.

Rather than thinking about it as the added pressure of a home Games we're seeing it as advantageous. We're going to have the home support, we're going to have facilities that we've used before, it's going to be all known to us. We're thinking of it as an advantage – support rather than pressure.

Every team is going to go into the Olympics and want to win gold. We have to go there believing that we can win gold and we are improving all the time. Last year was the first time an English team medalled at the Champions Trophy, first time we won a bronze medal at the World Cup. We're making big strides and it's just going to be keeping the momentum going and keeping our form as good as it has been.

Biography

Born 9 May 1980, Manchester

Club Reading

Favourite film Love, Actually

Favourite book Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

Favourite football team Manchester United

If she hadn't been a hockey player "I think I'd be a swimmer, I used to swim and I maybe would have pushed that instead of hockey."

The appeal of hockey "It's fast, exciting, passionate and there's load of goalmouth action. We work so hard and the running you will see is phenomenal. Please come and watch, fill that stand, feel that atmosphere. We've got a great location in the Olympic Park – apparently you can see all the way down the Olympic Park from the hockey stadium. It is going to be fantastic."

Olympic countdown

25 Jun–3 Jul 2011 FIH Women's Champions Trophy, Amsterdam (with England)

1 August 2011 Great Britain v Netherlands Test series, Bisham Abbey

20-27 Aug 2011 EuroHockey Nations Championship, Mönchengladbach (with England)

2-6 May 2012 Four Nations invitational official Olympic test event, the Hockey Centre, Olympic Park

Training

We've been on the current schedule since 2009. We've all moved down to the Bisham Abbey area so we can train twice a day every day. We're playing Test matches here regularly. We've got Belgium coming over next week, then China, the Netherlands and Japan. We've got a fantastic place where we can train, play matches and keep developing.