A medal is what the Dutch handball players are aiming for at the world championship. Routine Estavana Polman is sure, she told the media in the run-up to the tournament in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Will it work, a place on the podium? It is far too early to answer that question. The World Cup is less than a week away and first the eight weakest countries among the 32 participants had to be filtered out. The Netherlands played against Argentina (41-26), Congo-Brazzaville (40-20) and the Czech Republic in the first round (this match started on Monday at 8:30 PM). On Wednesday, the team of Swedish national coach Per Johansson will start the main round, in which it will take the results from the group stage.
Expectations are therefore high for the Dutch team. It is the legacy of the achievements of the previous decade, when the handball players rose to the global top. With the 2019 world title as the highlight. Of the eighteen-member selection that won gold in Japan four years ago, eleven players are still present at the World Cup in Scandinavia. That should have been twelve, but Merel Freriks tore a cruciate ligament and a meniscus just before the tournament at her French club.
A serious knee injury has kept Danick Snelder sidelined for some time. The former captain finally said goodbye to the Dutch team in the summer. The long-term rehabilitation from a cartilage-repairing operation in July 2022 was one of the reasons for Snelder to retire as an international player after thirteen years. A return to her German club Bietigheim is not yet a certainty, she says by telephone from Pijnacker, where she will stay until Christmas. “I feel great at the moment. It was a very intense rehabilitation, but I no longer have any pain and that is nice for daily life. But the question is whether that will remain the case when I start participating in top sport again. I also want to be able to ride a bicycle normally in twenty years.”
Towel in the ring
It is not the first time that Snelder is recovering from a surgical procedure; In 2018 she was operated on for a hernia, which meant she also had to miss the European Championships that year. “There was already a chance that I would have to throw in the towel,” she reflects. “Until the doctors told me after the operation that I could try again. No guarantees, but I got a little hope again. A year later I was at the World Cup. And not because I was an experienced player, but because I could make a serious contribution on the field. That was really special.”
There is a moment of silence on the line.
Snelder calls the 2019 world title the highlight of her career. No doubt. “When I think back about it, it still gives me goosebumps. I also remember exactly how it went in the final, and also in the first two hours afterwards. Disbelief, joy, realization. More every minute. Just not, it just turned out to be.” Snelder is referring to the performances in previous years, in which at least the semi-finals were reached in every major tournament from 2015 onwards, but gold was not achieved.
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The bar is high
The experiences in the strong competitions across the border of Snelder and her teammates at the Dutch team led to the greatest achievement in Dutch handball in 2019. And that World Cup gold has ensured that the bar has been set high at every major tournament since then. Snelder hopes that the current generation will not suffer from this. “Our path to the world top was gradual: from pre-qualifications, to qualifications, to a main tournament for the first time, to gold. It has been a long journey, but I have experienced it as super special. I hope that the internationals who have not had that experience experience the fun and not just the pressure.”
You can more quickly follow the Dutch team’s matches at home, via TV or online – including the matches against weak countries. “Our World Cups may have become bigger, but you play a few matches that are not about anything. And that’s not why you participate in a World Cup. Well, for those matches against Norway or France, when it comes to the marbles. It’s not about having another international match to your name.”
She donned the orange shirt 205 times and scored more than five hundred goals. But the combination of club handball and the national team was always difficult, she now realizes. “I have played a match every Wednesday and Saturday for years and then I wonder why I have a broken knee.”
During her rehabilitation, Snelder had time to look back on her career and she now knows very well what she liked and what she did not like. “These are the highlights that you live for. But I have also played against the second-to-last team on a Wednesday in the Bundesliga and thought: who are we playing against again?”
But she has consciously asked a lot of herself all these years, she says. “I won’t say I don’t have talent, but through hard work I have achieved what I have achieved. If we had to walk ten kilometers, I’d rather walk eleven. I don’t like listening to aches and pains, and it may have been too much. But it has brought me a lot and I wouldn’t have taken a step differently.”
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