Paris 2024 diary – 24 July
Here we are, folks. The 2024 Summer Olympics is finally upon us and while the Opening Ceremony takes place on Friday evening, handball gets off to an early start in less than 24 hours with the women’s competition on Thursday.
On arrival at a surprisingly calm Charles de Gaulle airport, I made my way to the baggage claim doubling up as an accreditation verification centre, which makes for a great gathering place of Olympic excitement.
Standing among short Finns, bulky Serbians, delighted Danish media and presumably important people taking selfies while waiting for their accreditation to be laminated, a sense of the community spirit of the games washes over me, reminding me of joyous times as a spectator during London 2012 and Rio 2016. There is no better setting than this celebration of sporting excellence to mark the end of the line for three of handball’s living legends.
I can’t think of an Olympic handball tournament that has had such a set-in-stone theme – retirement.
The end of each four-year cycle has always been a natural conclusion for international playing careers but the next two weeks or so will see the very last handball matches played by three of our sport’s very best: Mikkel Hansen, Stine Oftedal and Nikola Karabatic.
They are not the only ones and we’ll certainly get to the rest of the players over the course of the tournaments here on GoHandball and Handbollskanalen, but these three really stick out.
You could potentially add Niklas Landin and Katrine Lunde to the group but Landin will continue in club handball and Lunde is immortal, so there isn’t the same sense of finality.
We do know it’s the end for these three geniuses and the strong likelihood that they’ll all be competing for gold on Sunday 11 July makes this storyline all the more mouthwatering.
Cherry on the icing on the cake
The legacy of all three players is set in stone but the final memory from these games could prove to be a lasting one.
Mikkel Hansen failed in his final bid to claim handball’s greatest club title, clipping the crossbar in the Champions League final for Aalborg against Barcelona. But it is his efforts for the Danish national team that have won over his nation’s collective heart. He broke onto the scene at the 2008 Olympic Games, how fitting it would be for him to end his time on court with a second gold, with an entire country watching from afar.
Nikola Karabatic could have been the flag bearer of a home Olympic Games, if not for his off-court antics in 2012, as I discussed with L’Equipe journalist Yann Hildwein in today’s Handball Hour special podcast. He has put that behind him with his brilliant displays and reinvention over the years and he has the opportunity to stand alone as the only man to claim four handball gold medals at the age of 40.
Stine Oftedal shocked us all with her impending retirement announcement earlier in the season and while many among us still refuse to accept it, it’s happening. While Norway have been a dominant force in major championships over the past two decades, they have not claimed an Olympic gold since 2012. That leaves Oftedal with a pair of bronze medals and this has been her primary target for a long while. Unlike the two aforementioned stars, Stine is at her peak and plans to close her playing career with the perfect double triumph of the Champions League and Olympic Games just two months apart.
Enjoy them for the last time
It is truly special that we get to see these athletes off at the world’s greatest sporting event.
In this case, handball and its fellow team sports offers something that not many other sports offer at the Olympics, a farewell tour for an athlete that may be past their best.
The intricacies of the sport and of these athletes mean that they can still be involved in the squad. If Karabatic or Hansen were part of a track cycling or rowing quartet, where it’s purely down to your ability and stats, there would be no room for sentimentality or the je ne sais quoi that makes them shine, they simply wouldn’t feature.
And unlike other prominent team sports like football or basketball, handball at the Olympics is the pinnacle of our sport for the top players, making this the perfect set of circumstances for this trio and many more, to go out on a high in Paris and Lille.
