We have tickets to a Men’s Handball preliminary session (two matches). What’s handball? It’s different than the sport of knocking a ball against a wall with your hand that some of us played when we were kids.
What exactly IS handball then? According to the USA Handball webpage,
[team] handball is a fast-paced team game that was first played in Scandinavia and Germany at the end of the 19th century. Two teams of seven players (six field players and one goalkeeper) pass a ball using their hands with the aim of throwing it into the goal of the other team. A standard match consists of two periods of 30 minutes, and the team that scores more goals wins.
In the United States, the sport is commonly referred to as team handball. It is often described as combining elements of sport like basketball, water polo, soccer and ice hockey. Men’s handball was first played at the 1936 Olympics Games in Berlin as an outdoor sport. At the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, handball was an indoor sport and it has been an indoor sport on the Olympic program ever since. Women’s team handball was added at the 1976 Summer Olympics.
For this Olympics, there will be two group of six teams. In each group, every team plays each other, and the top four advance to a single elimination tournament. The NBC Olympics website provides more links.
For an introductory video, USA Team Handball gives us this video.
On the men’s side, Japan has qualified for the competition by virtue of being the host country. Denmark has qualified by winning the 2019 World Championship, Spain by winning the 2020 European Championship, Egypt as the 2020 African Champion, Bahrain by winning the Asia Handball Federation Men’s Asian qualification event, and Argentina by winning the 2019 Pan American Games.
The final 6 spots will be filled by taking the top two out of each of three 2020 Olympic Qualification Tournaments, with the tournaments held in Norway, France, and Germany. These tournaments will be held 17 to 19 April, 2020. The selection of teams participating is complicated, so feel free to check out this Wikipedia page for more detail on the men’s qualification,
On the women’s side, again Japan is automatically qualified as the host country. The remaining qualifiers are France, Brazil, South Korea, Angola, and the Netherlands. The qualifying tournaments will be held in Spain, Hungary, and Montenegro on March 20 through 22.
Please visit this Wikipedia page for more information on the women’s qualification.
Unfortunately, the US did not qualify, nor will they have an opportunity to play their way in.
The matches will be held at Yoyogi National Stadium, an iconic structure on the edge of Yoyogi Park. It was built for aquatics and basketball for the Tokyo 1964 Olympics.