Men’s Olympic Handball Tournament to be Held in Croatia? Maybe

November 6, 2019 – The International Handball Federation has decided on the hosts for the Olympic Handball Qualifiers… and Croatia could be one of them. 

Gol.hr reports that before the European Championships, which will be played in Austria, Norway, and Sweden from January 9 to 26, 2020, the International Handball Federation (IHF) has designated the hosts of the qualifying tournaments for the Olympic Games in Tokyo next year. 

The tournaments will be played in the spring of next year, from April 17-19, and each of the two best teams will compete in the Tokyo Olympics.

France, Germany, and Norway were selected as hosts, while Croatia was named as the reserve country. 

So, what exactly does this mean?

A total of 12 teams will compete in the Tokyo Olympics, four of which are already known: Japan automatically qualifies as the host, Denmark as world champion, Argentina as the winner of the Pan-American Games and Bahrain as the winner of the Asian Qualifying Tournament.

There are eight more spots open, and one of them will be known at the end of the upcoming European Championships. Namely, the best national team at the Euros, not counting Denmark, who has already qualified, will also secure their spot in Tokyo.

Thus, if Denmark takes the gold, then the European Championship finalist will book the spot for the Olympics. This is why it could be important for Croatia.

Namely, if one of the three teams designated to host the qualifying tournaments (France, Germany, Norway) wins the European Championship title (or loses to Denmark in the final), then the qualifying tournament will not be played in that country but in Croatia, which will step in as the first reserve.

Croatia has already hosted this qualifying tournament once, and namely, back in 2012 when the Cowboys locked their spot for the London Olympics in Varazdin, defeating the national teams of Iceland, Japan, and Chile.

This time, the competition will undoubtedly be much stronger, and it could only help Croatia if they were to secure their spot for Tokyo at one of the Croatian halls, in an atmosphere that would be excellent.

However, the best-case scenario, of course, would be if Croatia were to skip this qualifying tournament all together… though they’d have to become the European champion first.

To read more about sport in Croatia, follow TCN’s dedicated page. 

 

Subscribe to our newsletter

the fields marked with * are required

Email: *
First name:
Last name:
Gender:	Male Female
Country:
Birthday:	[DD] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 [MM] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 [YYYY] 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023

Please don't insert text in the box below!