Games offers a helping hand to minority sports (From The Northern Echo)

Games offers a helping hand to minority sports

9:24am Saturday 16th August 2008 in

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THE Olympics might be a showcase of sporting success, but they are also a celebration of sporting biodiversity.

For every men’s 100m there is a men’s Greco- Roman wrestling under-64kg class. For every women’s 200m breaststroke there is a women’s team foil in fencing.

Once every four years, the little man or woman is every bit as important as the superstar.

So yesterday morning, as the athletics programme was getting under way in the Bird’s Nest Stadium, I took myself off to the Olympic Sports Centre Gymnasium to watch Brazil take on South Korea in the final pool match of the women’s handball tournament.

And against all expectations, it turned out to be one of the most riveting 60 minutes of sport I have experienced all year.

To the uninitiated – and let’s be honest, that’s going to be pretty much all of you – handball is like a mongrel cross of basketball and netball, with a bit of five-aside football thrown in for good measure.

Played on a court roughly the same size as a basketball court, teams of seven players pass a small ball from hand to hand, bouncing it once.

So far, so netball. But rather than shooting into a hoop, the players attempt to score into a five-a-sidefootball- style goal, past a goalkeeper who seems to save no more than one shot every 40-or-so minutes.

If you have to be somewhat eccentric to play in goal in football, you have to be positively loopy to stand between the sticks in handball.

The Brazilian goalkeeper appeared particularly deranged, with her expression growing more and more pained with every goal that went past her.

Given that South Korea ended with 32 of them, she was just about to explode at the final hooter.

She clearly took after her coach, who was a bizarre combination of Jose Mourinho and Neil Warnock rolled into one.

As far as I could tell, he was sent to the stands twice, yet he still reappeared on the touchline to tear out his carefully-manicured mane with every controversial refereeing decision.

I couldn’t tell for certain, but there seemed to be plenty of them. Handball is meant to be a non-contact sport, but judging by the high number of collisions and tussles that peppered yesterday’s game, the interpretation of that particular rule must be lax.

If the players weren’t rolling around on the ground with each other, they were squaring up less than an inch from each other’s face.

But the competitiveness simply underlined the importance of the occasion for the competitors. When it comes to handball, this must have been the World Cup final and the Champions League rolled into one.

And because it meant so much to both the players and the large group of Korean supporters to my left, it was impossible not to be swept along by what was happening.

It helped that the game was close – Brazil eventually triumphed 33-32 with the number nine (who else?) scoring the winner with two seconds left – but the athleticism and skill of the players was more than enough to command attention.

It was the first handball game I’d ever witnessed, and it’s more than likely that it’ll also be the last, but never again will I scoff at those who devote their time and attention to so-called minority sports.

For 99 per cent of the year, the sporting world revolves around a series of muchpublicised performers. But come the Olympics, the established order goes out of the window, and the experience of attending the Games is all the better for that.

Brazil’s handball players will not be feted like Asafa Powell or Michael Phelps, but they are every bit as integral to the magic of Olympic competition.

HANDBALL is one of the sports causing the British Olympic Association problems as they attempt to ensure that Great Britain is represented in every Olympic discipline in 2012.

The country doesn’t exactly have a handball heritage so, in an attempt to address the issue, the BOA organised ‘Sporting Giants’, a scheme that encouraged anyone over 6ft 3in to try out for a range of different sports.

An initial pool of 5,000 applicants has been whittled down to 50, with Olympic hopefuls spread across handball, basketball and rowing.

With support from the National Lottery, Britain’s handball squad is now based in Denmark, with players playing for a number of clubs in the Danish semiprofessional league.

By the time 2012 rolls around, it is hoped they will be able to hold their own on the world stage.

DESPITE the scare stories that dominated the build-up to the Games, I’ve had no trouble accessing a range of British and American internet sites.

However, as of this morning, I have been utterly unable to log on to Newcastle United’s official website.

Either the authorities regard ‘Shay Given’ as an illegal search term, or Mike Ashley’s plans for global domination are doomed from the word go.

SPEAKING of football, it has been interesting to see a large number of Chinese people wandering around in Chelsea strips. The Blues certainly seem to have the edge over Manchester United and Liverpool in terms of conquering this part of the world.

But English football tops are heavily outnumbered by replica vests from America’s NBA basketball league, underlining Chinese society’s love of all things American and the popularity of basketball in this country.

Tickets for China’s basketball matches are some of the hottest properties in the whole of the Games, with gymnastics currently coming a close second.

All of that will change, though, once the 110m hurdles begins.

As if the pressure of defending his title wasn’t enough, Lui Xiang will carry the hopes and expectations of more than 1.3bn people when he competes next week.