99.9 per cent of tickets sold, and superlatives in the Australian media came thick and fast – despite the lack of a great handball tradition the tournament managed by Alex Gavrilovic was a great success – and there were ten teams instead of eight in the women’s tournament for the first time. In the very end the handball powers of Russia (last time so far) triumphed in the men’s tournament and Denmark (for the second time in the row) in the women’s tournament. Russia’s goalkeeper Andrej Lawrow went down in handball history, as he has been the sole handball player to win his third Olympic gold; Vladimir Maximov achieved a brilliant feat of winning Olympic gold as both a player (in 1976) and a coach. The Swedish men’s team became the unlucky fellows again, as they had made through to the Olympic final for the third time in a row but failed to win and thus had to settle with silver again. Their captain Stefan Lövgren at least scored 51 goals to earn the top scorer’s crown. 

Russia and Sweden had already been predominant during the preliminaries when Sweden earned five victories without losing a single point whereas Russia held a lead of one point over Germany. Sweden clearly overcame Spain 32:25 (15:10) in the semi-final while Russia had to fight hard to secure their 29:26 (14:15) victory over Serbia-Montenegro. Yet, the team from the Balkan region was successful in the match for bronze to prevail against the Iberian side 26:22 (12:9) – it was the last medal for the successor state of Yugoslavia during Olympic Games or other major events – except for the silver medal at the 2012 ECh. The final was a hard fought one like in 1992  - and the Swedes had to give in once again when losing 26:28 (14:13) to Russia, whose pivot Dmitry Torgowanow made an outstanding performance to win his second Olympic gold. 

The Danish ladies swept to another victory in the women’s tournament although they had just ranked second behind Norway after the preliminaries. Double Olympic champions Korea (1988 and 1992) easily won five games in the opposite group to rank at the top ahead of Hungary. However, similar to the thrilling Olympic final in 1996, the Asian side lost 29:32 (11:20) to Denmark. To everybody’s surprise Hungary easily won by 28:23 (16:10) against favourites Norway. Following four medals in a row (2 gold and 2 silver) Korea had to settle without a medal due to their close 21:22 (13:12) defeat to Norway in the match for bronze. For a long time it seemed as if Hungary could win against Denmark in the final but finally the Danish ladies celebrated their 31:27 (14:16) victory to earn the gold – led by coach Jan Pytlick, who is also the current coach of the team. Norway’s Kjersti Grini scored 61 goals to become the top scorer. 

 

Gold: RUS, Silver: SWE, Bronze: ESP, 4. YUG - 5. GER - 6. FRA -7. EGY - 8. SLO- 9. KOR - 10. TUN - 11. CUB - 12. AUS

Gold: DEN, Silver: HUN, Bronze: NOR, 4. KOR, 5. AUT, 6. FRA, 7. ROM, 8. BRA, 9. ANG, 10. USA