Dhyan Chand joined the British Indian Army as a teenager and only took up hockey seriously as a soldier, practicing at night under moonlight after his regular duties were done, since there was little time or facility available for organized daytime practice — a habit that reportedly earned him the nickname 'Chand,' meaning moon, among fellow soldiers.
His stick control was so precise that, during a match in the Netherlands, tournament officials reportedly stopped the game to inspect his hockey stick, suspecting a magnet must be hidden inside it, unable to otherwise explain how he kept the ball attached to his stick through such tight defensive pressure.
Playing for India at the 1928, 1932, and 1936 Olympics, he was central to India winning gold in all three tournaments, scoring goals at a rate that opposing teams and journalists across Europe struggled to find comparisons for at the time, in an era when hockey coverage rarely focused on individual brilliance from non-European players.
After the 1936 Berlin Olympics final, in which India defeated the host nation decisively, Adolf Hitler reportedly offered Chand a position and German citizenship in an attempt to recruit him for the German army, an offer Chand declined, choosing instead to return home to India, where hockey remained, for decades afterward, one of the country's most dominant international sports.