18 - 24 April 2002
Issue No.582
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 18 - 24 April 2002 Issue No.582 |
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Half-time
Defending the title
In Morocco, Egypt tomorrow begins the defence of its African handball crown, an endeavour easier said than accomplished.
Egypt beat Algeria for the title two years ago in Algeria in a dramatic final. A repeat is in order.
The 10-day competition is expected to be ferocious, especially among the North Africans, but in truth none of the 12 participating nations can be taken for granted, testimony to the competitive level the sport has reached in the last few years.
In the sixties, seventies and eighties Algeria and Tunisia, in particular, had a hammerlock over African handball. It was not until 1989 that Egypt broke the stranglehold, winning the African title for the first time. It has not looked back since, never to part with the trophy except in 1996 when a squad of young players took to the court, replacing seasoned players. The result of that experiment was a fourth place finish.
Africa was not the only site of Egyptian conquests. A silver medal was bagged in the 1991 Mediterranean Games in Athens. The world junior championship was captured in Cairo in 1993. A respectable sixth place finish was achieved in both the 1995 world championships in Iceland and the same tournament in Japan in 1997. There was a slight drop to seventh in 1999 before finishing in the previously unheard of ranking for an Arab or African country -- fourth -- in 2001.
And when compared to the virtual absence of other Egyptian sports in the Olympics, the presence of Egypt's handballers at the Summer Games has been felt. True, there have been no medals but achievements all the same: sixth place in Atlanta in 1996 and Sydney 2000. Observers suggest the team could have soared even higher had the officiating been fair.
When Egypt jumped into the world's top 10 -- an area previously restricted to European teams -- it snatched a place from a European country. The International Handball Federation's president, then Austrian Erwin Lanc, reportedly told Hassan Mustafa, head of Egypt's handball federation, that although he was pleased to see an African nation having progressed so far in the game, he was disappointed to see a European country nudged out of the top 10.
But the transition should have come as no surprise to Lanc, given that Mustafa, more than anyone else, is responsible for Egypt's tremendous drive upwards. Well-known for his iron grip on the sport, Mustafa is a taskmaster who favours taking care of every single handball detail in the country. His efforts have led detractors to label him a dictator -- but have also landed him the plum job of head of the International Handball Federation, the first Egyptian to hold such a high-ranking sports position. Like the team he heads, Mustafa has gone up in the world.
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