Team Handball

First Olympic Year:
1936, After the Nazi's won they didn't play regularly until 1972. Women's Handball appeared at the next Olympics in 1976.

Origin: 

Handball, like many sports, has no real clear origin. It has characteristics of similar handball games from Medieval France, a game played by Inuits in Greenland in the middle ages, and the 18^th century had something similar in Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, and Germany.

Wikipedia mentions something about Uruguay. I don't quite understand how mostly cold weather nations have this game and then Uruguay has a variation as well. It was a colony of Portugal with some Spanish influence, which doesn't have much notoriety in the Handball world.

Anyway, a Danish Lieutenant (read Left-tenant, it's more fun that way) wrote down the rules in 1906. He was gym teacher so I suppose he had to write down the game in case he was sick one day. After that “modern” rules were written up by a trio of Germans because the Dane must have not been efficient enough in his rules.

Rumor is that Archduke Ferdinand played by a different set of Handball rules and the Yugoslavians took it as an attack. That's why they had their poorly planned assassination attempt. Big rivalry to this day between Austria and former Yugoslavia.¹

Eventually the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) created a committee so everyone could agree on some international rules.² A couple years later an Amateur Federation was created and in 1946 the International Handball Federation was created.

The First Competition³: 

Like previously stated, the goddamn NAZIs won the Gold in Berlin. Jesse Owens was too busy dominating the blue-eyed devil on the track to come help the Handball squad out.

The US did have a team in the event and got obliterated by the Third Reichers 29-1. At least it wasn't a shut out.

The weird thing about the set up was that there were two groups of 3 that had a round robin. Two teams from each group advanced. Instead of an elimination tournament they decided to a round robin with four teams. That seems anti-Germanic, well anyways the Germans went undefeated the entire tournament with Austria only losing once to the Germans and Switzerland coming into the bronze.

The box scores are small summaries and annoying to read, so I'm just going to go ahead and claim that Fritz Spengler and Fritz Fromm, commonly called the Fritz Frollickers due to their uncanny ability to leave the ground and throw at the same time, were the key to the NAZI gold medal team.

The few pictures I have seen make the stand pretty packed and unlike the games you will see this year, these games were played on field that resemble a soccer field.

Dominant Countries:

On the men's side the French have won the last to World Championships and the last Olympics in Beijing and Sweden is historically strong but don't seem to have placed lately.

On the Women's side the Rooskies look to be the empire of the sport. They did get upset in the 2011 World Championships by France.

Basic Concept:

Each team has a goalie and 6 field players, so 7 v7. The court is 40 meter(m) long and 20 m wide.⁴

You score by throwing the ball, it's basically a small soccer ball that is easy to handle with one hand, into the goal. You can't enter a 6 m arc. That is for the defending goalie only.

It is a physical game similar to basketball. You can make contact with a guy as long as you are between him and the goal, but obviously not tackle the guy. Similar to soccer, you can get a yellow card for a harsh foul that counts as a warning. You get one warning the next time there is a 2 minute penalty where the team has to play a man down, like hockey. You can get a Red card for an immediate ejection and 2 minute penalty. Your team does not have to play down the entire game just the 2 minutes.

You may see a penalty shot. Which a player gets the ball at the center 7 meters from goal. The goalie can come out to a 4 meter line. Looks like this.

Tactics:

Basically the best way to score is on a fast break. You can dribble and take 3 steps between every dribble. Passing like all sports is the fastest way down the court. You will see a jump shot end the break usually if it is executed correctly.⁵

If the defense gets back you try to get it quickly to a pivot man on the edge of the border. It is difficult to defend if you get it to this man and he should score regularly.

If the defense rejects this, the team will try to create movement to pull defenders and create space continuing to try to get to the pivot man on the perimeter. It is difficult to do so, so often a long range attempt will eventually be attempted this has a low likelihood of resulting in a goal.

Basically you should watch and look for openings teams can exploit. If a guy has a clean look at the goal it will be exciting. Also, the goalies are crazy people. The offensive team can jump into the circle and once they land they must exit as quickly as possible. So you can see the goalie jump right at a dude with the ball spreading his body as wide as could be. Expect a few shots to the nether regions, I would aim there for a tactical advantage.

How is the Outlook for the US? The Men and Women did not qualify, so not good.

Betting Odds⁶:

For the Men French are better than 2/1 favorites, Denmark at 3/1, Spain and Croatia are both at 4/1. I like Iceland at 16/1.

For the Women Norway are the favorites at 7/4. Russia and France around 3/1. I like the Dominican Women at 1000/1.

What to look for:

Mikkel Hansen on Denmark is the reigning Player of the Year. He is 24 and kind of looks like Taylor Kitsch's ugly brother.

Heidi Løke of Noway is the Player of the year. She looks very Norwegian.

1None of this is true.
2Basically they are a group that helps all sorts of events to get their shit together. This happened in 1926 by the way. We will likely see the IAAF again. Also, it was the Swedes who created it, those crazy Swedes.
3Basically gleamed from Wiki and the Official Olympic Record (Page 428 has the good stuff)
4Picture an indoor soccer field. Or look at this
5 AMURICA
6I'll grab these from anywhere, this time is the great site LatestBettingOdds.com .