Olympic Team Handball The World waits for the US to take notice By: Sean Gregory 1/3 It s halftime at the Olympic Sports Center Gymnasium on Tuesday afternoon. Sneakers squeak on the court as the French and Chinese players warm up; they practice their dribbling with both hands and perfect their jump-shot techniques. Nothing but net! The game resumes. China comes out in a tight zone defense. France passes the ball around the perimeter, creating open shots for its players. France s Christophe Kempe posts up his man and hits a turnaround shot. The French take control. Inane music, like the opening chords of We Will Rock You, blares over the loudspeaker while the teams are playing. It s just as annoying as in an NBA arena. French star player Luc Abalo takes a shot on goal
> It s what Americans do. What s the problem here? Pull tab to learn how handball is similar to other popular sports 2/3 Ah, the wonders of Olympic basketball. Except these guys aren t playing hoops. They re going for gold in team handball, a popular game throughout Europe and, to a lesser extent, American gym classes. But handball is the only sport in which the Americans don t have a single Olympian. (Rhythmic gymnastics you know, the one with the ribbons and balls also has no Yank participant. But since it s an event within gymnastics, it doesn t count as its own Olympic sport.) What a waste. Haven t U.S. Olympic officials heard about this medal race with China? Every piece of hardware counts, and the U.S. is squandering a chance to cash in. Here s how handball works (and we re not talking about the version of the sport where old guys, often in frighteningly tight shorts, slap a ball against a wall): six athletic men and women run around a court, dribbling a mini-soccer ball every three steps. They pass it around and throw it into a nearly 10-ft.-wide, 7-ft.-high goal. You have to shoot the ball outside of an arc, which stretches about 20 ft. from the goal. But you can leap forward into the arc, as long as you start your jump behind the line. Sure, there s a goalie there, but think about it: you get to throw a little ball into a fairly big net. Soccer is hard precisely because you can t use your hands; it s difficult to control a ball with your feet. Here, just grip it and rip it. Basketball is tricky because the hoop is 10 ft. off the ground and relatively tiny. Here, throw it high, throw it low, you will score. Hockey is hard because you skate on ice. In handball, you just move your legs. It s running, jumping and throwing, says Tom Fitzgerald, who played on the U.S. Olympic team in 1996, the last year in which the U.S. fielded a team. It s what Americans do. What s the problem here? Steve Roush, chief of sport performance for the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC), admits there s no real excuse for the America s dismal Olympic handball record, which is 4 wins, 26 losses, 1 tie
3/3 and yet another seat on the bench in 08. I m absolutely on the same wavelength, says Roush. There s an athlete pool out there we can tap into to be successful. We have struggled for decades to figure out a formula. 2012 French National Team How about this: before the qualifying tournaments for the 2012 Olympics, corral a mix of solid excollege basketball players and recently retired NBAers. Ideally, you d get current NBA players, but qualifiers would happen during the NBA season, so the players wouldn t be able to break free. Put the college players and pro retirees in a camp for a month. Bang, the U.S. should be in the Olympics. Handball players and the USOC will tell you that the game is way too technical and that it takes years to learn all the tricks. I m not convinced that s the case. Who dribbles better than American ballers? The goal on defense is to shuffle your feet and keep your man in front of you. Basketball players practice this in grade school. On offense, it s work to find the open man. Sound familiar? Even the world s best admit that handball is fairly straightforward. It s not a difficult sport to practice, says Victor Tomas of Spain. It s not a difficult sport to learn. Click through the photos to see the gold medal winning French National Team during the 2012 London Olympics Tap the circle to find a club team near you Once the U.S. team qualifies for the Olympics, go for the pros: take that group of NBA players who ve always wanted to be Olympians, put them in a summer camp before the Games, and bang, the U.S. has a medal contender. That s ridiculous, you say. What sports executive would let a multimillion-dollar investment play some silly sport in the off-season? Well, if basketball general managers let their guys play Olympic basketball in the summer and hockey bosses permit their stars to play in the Olympic tournament during their season, why wouldn t they let them hurl the handball? They re less likely to get hurt in a sport that every kid in gym class can play. Plus, it ll keep them from crashing motorcycles during the off-season. And what happens to those poor guys who qualified for the Olympics but got supplanted
Olympic 1/3 Team Handball The World waits for the US to take notice By: Sean Gregory French star player Luc Abalo takes a shot on goal It s halftime at the Olympic Sports Center Gymnasium on Tuesday afternoon. Sneakers squeak on the court as the French and Chinese players warm up; they practice their dribbling with both hands and perfect their jump-shot techniques. Nothing but net! The game resumes. China comes out in a tight zone defense. France passes the ball around the perimeter, creating open shots for its players. France s Christophe Kempe posts up his man and hits a turnaround shot. The French take control. Inane music, like the opening chords of We Will Rock You, blares over the loudspeaker while the teams are playing. It s just as annoying as in an NBA arena.
It s what Americans do. What s the problem here? Ah, the wonders of Olympic basketball. Except these guys aren t playing hoops. They re going for gold in team handball, a popular game throughout Europe and, to a lesser extent, American gym classes. But handball is the only sport in which the Americans don t have a single Olympian. (Rhythmic gymnastics you know, the one with the ribbons and balls also has no Yank participant. But since it s an event within gymnastics, it doesn t count as its own Olympic sport.) 2/3 > Pull tab to learn how handball is similar to other popular sports What a waste. Haven t U.S. Olympic officials heard about this medal race with China? Every piece of hardware counts, and the U.S. is squandering a chance to cash in. Here s how handball works (and we re not talking about the version of the sport where old guys, often in frighteningly tight shorts, slap a ball against a wall): six athletic men and women run around a court, dribbling a mini-soccer ball every three steps. They pass it around and throw it into a nearly 10-ft.-wide, 7-ft.-high goal. You have to shoot the ball outside of an arc, which stretches about 20 ft. from the goal. But you can leap forward into the arc, as long as you start your jump behind the line. Sure, there s a goalie there, but think about it: you get to throw a little ball into a fairly big net. Soccer is hard precisely because you can t use your hands; it s difficult to control a ball with your feet. Here, just grip it and rip it. Basketball is tricky because the hoop is 10 ft. off the ground and
relatively tiny. Here, throw it high, throw it low, you will score. 3/3 2012 French National Team Click through the photos to see the gold medal winning French National Team during the 2012 London Olympics Tap the circle to find a club team near you Hockey is hard because you skate on ice. In handball, you just move your legs. It s running, jumping and throwing, says Tom Fitzgerald, who played on the U.S. Olympic team in 1996, the last year in which the U.S. fielded a team. It s what Americans do. What s the problem here? Steve Roush, chief of sport performance for the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC), admits there s no real excuse for the America s dismal Olympic handball record, which is 4 wins, 26 losses, 1 tie and yet another seat on the bench in 08. I m absolutely on the same wavelength, says Roush. There s an athlete pool out there we can tap into to be successful. We have struggled for decades to figure out a formula. How about this: before the qualifying tournaments for the 2012 Olympics, corral a mix of solid excollege basketball players and recently retired NBAers. Ideally, you d get current NBA players, but qualifiers would happen during the NBA season, so the players wouldn t be able to break free. Put the college players and pro retirees in a camp for a month. Bang, the U.S. should be in the Olympics. Handball players and the USOC will tell you that the game is way too technical and that it takes years to learn all the tricks. I m not convinced that s the case. Who dribbles better than American ballers? The goal on defense is to shuffle your feet and keep your man in front of you. Basketball players practice this in grade school. On offense, it s work to find the open man.