It was not your first trip to Argentina. Was it your best?

Kalin: We prepared this Championship for more than one and a half year. During this time I was three times in Argentina, working intensively with the Organizing Committee. But there is a difference between preparation-time and the World Championship itself. Let me make a conclusion: The next organizer will have to wok very hard, if they want to reach the same level of organisation. The Argentinean organising committee has fulfilled all the requested standards accordingly to the IHF bid an event manual. It was a privilege to work as a part of this team.

The general evaluation of organisation also according with the feedback of participating teams of the tournament was excellent.

 

You were also responsible for the IHF-team, how did they work?

Kalin: It is a standard routine that we conduct, in every IHF event, a preparation for technical delegates and referees. One of the elements of the preparation is also the rule test, which must be done by all the IHF-nominees. Generally speaking the entire team works very well. We had also a great help of two office members from Basel. We have worked a lot, to build up the team spirit that follows all IHF-events. For the evaluation of the performance of technical delegates and referees we can be also very satisfied.

 

Could you tell us something about the level of the tournament.

Kalin: If we compare the past three Youth World Championships, we can say that also the performance of the teams has developed enormously and the quality difference between the continents is becoming smaller. This fact was confirmed also by the statements of 8 coaches of the quarterfinals during the press conference that was organised by the IHF and also later on at the second press conference the coaches of the best four teams have commented that most of the teams are going into the direction of developing complete player, that means to be officiate in defence and attack. We have had in this World Championship a lot of tied matches during the preliminary round and very exciting matches in the quarterfinals.

 

It was a Youth World Championship, but a lot of spectators watched the matches and also television broadcasted.

Kalin: The first quality of the organisation of the World Championship in Argentina was the new sport hall “Once Unidos”, which was daily, during the entire competition period, completely full. The second hall “Malvinas Argentinas” with a capacity of 8.000 spectators was in the preliminary round and during the games of Argentina, almost full. In the final phase of  the competition we had also a respective number of spectators between four- and five thousand. In total more than 45.000 handball fans enjoyed the exciting matches in both venues. I can really congratulate the organiser for their excellent spectators concept in this championship.

A further quality of the Championship was also that 3 participating countries bought the rights of TV-broadcasting, Argentina, Gabon and Qatar. It is for the International Handball Federation very important, that we broadcast a lot of matches in handball homes worldwide.

 

Now the closing ceremony of the Youth World Championship is over. Time to relax …

Kalin: The end of one highlight is the start of the next one. In the final weekend a part of the organising committee for the Women's World Championship in Brazil visited Argentina and we were finalising some topics concerning reconstruction of the venues. I must confirm that I was really satisfied with the planning and solutions that they proposed. We are preparing in accordance with the decision of the Executive an educational program together with the colleagues from our PRC (Playing Rules and Referees Commission) and CCM (Commission of Coaching and Methods), which will improve the level of performance and understanding of standards that we want to develop for the work of technical delegates. We will continue to work with the organising committee in Brazil and at the end of November we have a test event for the Olympic Games in London 2012. There are a lot of additional activities till the end of this year, So we have a meeting of our COC (Commission of Organizing and Competition) but let me focus on the last competition, here in Argentina to finalize this project in a spirit of excellence. In general there is no t