Handball Prepares for Lift-Off in Britain After Olympic Success

(ATR) LOCOG’s handball competition manager Alex Gavrilovic tells Around the Rings that improvements in the sport’s presentation at London 2012 have won an army of new fans.

He said the Copper Box had been a "brilliant" venue, an arena that saw capacity crowds of 4,800 before the sport transferred to the Basketball Arena, where the finals will be staged Sunday.

"People are close to the action and can hear the thud of the ball. It’s lived up to our expectations that this would be a fantastic venue," he told ATR.

With the use of a roving camera "so people feel part of it" and more videos to educate and entertain the fans about the rules and nuances of the game, Gavrilovic claimed that LOCOG had got its presentation of the sport just right.

There was more spectator involvement in the sport than at Beijing 2008, he said.

"We did some of these things really well. I didn’t think Beijing got that 100 percent right," he added, explaining how the crowd was "egged on" by the MC and beat-heavy music.

Handball’s audience was predominantly made up of people who were novices to the sport. "It’s nice to see people adopt the teams. The same thing happened in Sydney," he said of the large number of British fans who had bought tickets.Gavrilovic was competition manager there, and also in Beijing four years ago.

"They can understand the game very quickly and they are just along for the ride," he said.

As the other 25 sports of London 2012 play out elsewhere, Gavrilovic said he’s pleased with the amount of support for handball and media attention lavished on it at the Games.

"The public loves it and the media are writing positive things about it," he said, noting that VIPs such as British PM David Cameron had warm words of praise for handball.

Handball’s transfer from the Copper Box to the Basketball Arena was one of the big challenges of Gavrilovic’s team.

LOCOG officials had to dismantle the handball field-of-play surface, goals and equipment and install them at the Basketball Arena in a nine-hour conversion.

The task involved removing 36 synthetic handball flooring strips, each weighing 120kg, and then rolling them out and taping them together at the bigger venue.

But Gavrilovic and his colleagues completed the job in time. He congratulated them for doing a spectacular job in delivering great men’s and women’s tournaments. A similar transfer of the sport took place at Beijing 2008 and Sydney 2000, he recalls. For London 2012, the move to the Basketball Arena allowed nearly a doubling of spectators for the latter stages of the handball competitions.

Commenting on the popularity of the sport at the Games, Gavrilovic said that the first 10 days of the competitions had seen huge numbers of people queuing outside the Copper Box for ticket returns – a system mirroring the recycling of tickets at the Wimbledon tennis championships. "That has worked really well," he said.

Britain’s handball teams drew passionate fans but, as expected, they failed to progress to the latter stages. The women’s team has only spent three years together, so it was no surprise; most of the big guns can boast team members who have played together for six to 10 years, he explained.

But Gavrilovic believes the British are taking handball to their hearts and the enthusiasm of crowds will give the game a significant lift in the U.K.

He said International Handball Federation chiefs had been "pleasantly surprised" by the reception that has greeted handball at London 2012: "They didn’t think that might happen in England."

Gavrilovic said he had heard that handball’s national governing bodies in the U.K. had visions to capitalize on the Olympics to develop interest in the sport, while he expects new handball clubs to pop up around the nation. "There’s a lot of groundwork [being done]," he said. "It’s very pleasing."

Reported by Mark Bisson

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