Roller skating, powerlifting or field archery: 3,600 athletes from 100 countries have been competing in 34 disciplines for ten days since Thursday (July 7th, 2022) in Birmingham, Alabama, USA. The German women’s national beach handball team has particularly high hopes for a medal.
The team around captain Lucie-Marie Kretzschmar, daughter of Stefan Kretzschmar, won the world championship just last week – and wants to be part of the World Games one thing above all: advertise your sport.
This year, the young people of the world are not meeting in one of the global mega-metropolises, but in an industrial city with 200,000 inhabitants in the poor southern United States. World Games instead of Olympic Games. 23 sports facilities in the shade of a disused blast furnace are to become a shop window – for the fastest growing sports that have not yet made it into the Olympic program.
One of them is beach handball. A variant that has a niche existence in Germany, as Lucie-Marie Kretzschmar, the captain of the national team, is always amused to say: “When I tell you what I do, I often get the reaction: You made a mistake, you meant beach volleyball!”
Artistic goals count double
In fact, both sports have a lot in common: Like beach volleyball or beach soccer, beach handball is also played on sand – barefoot, of course. Each team consists of four players. A game lasts ten minutes twice. In contrast to the semicircle in indoor handball, the goal area is rectangular.
The special feature: Artistic goals count double – for example, if a player turns around her body axis in the air after jumping in front of the goal (“spin shot“) or catches the ball in flight and throws it directly (“Kempa-Trick”). A spectacle for players and fans. “There’s always a good atmosphere on the pitch, there’s music playing. You get that holiday feeling straight away when you see players playing on the sand,” says Lucie-Marie Kretzschmar. “It’s ideal for all sides.”
Father Stefan is not a fan yet, but “on the right track”
The 21-year-old from Magdeburg comes from a true handball dynasty. Her grandfather Peter played 66 times for the East German national team. Her grandma Waltraud was a three-time world champion. Her father Stefan, known by his nickname “Kretzsche”, was one of the best players in the world in the 90s.
It wasn’t easy to convince him of the beach version of his favorite sport. “He didn’t know this professional development towards competitive sport at all. That’s why it took him a bit to get used to it,” says the defender. “But now he’s also following our games, at the European Championships, at the World Championships and at the World Games, I’m sure.” as “Fan” she wouldn’t call him anyway – and adds with a smile: “But he’s on the right track, I’d say.”
Dream of Paris 2024 shattered
Beach handball was also on the right track: after its invention in Italy in the mid-1990s, the young discipline has been one of the invitation sports of the World Games since 2001. In 2015, the first attempts to upgrade beach handball to an Olympic sport followed. In 2020, the International Handball Federation submitted a corresponding application to the International Olympic Committee.
Disillusionment soon followed: Beach handball will not be shown in Paris in 2024. Now Lucie-Marie Kretzschmar is hoping for Los Angeles 2028: “That’s why it’s so important that we present ourselves in this tournament and convey the values that make up our sport: fun and fairness, but also passion and fighting spirit.”
World title gives hope
A week ago, Kretschmar surprisingly won the World Cup with the national team in Crete – by beating Spain 2-0 in the final. On the evening after the award ceremony, the winners and the losers celebrated together. “The togetherness is something that makes beach handball so special”, says Kretzschmar. “That’s also the idea behind the Olympic Games. That’s why I think that’s where we belong.”