Seven-a-side handball was born in a 1917 Berlin rulebook
Team handball pits two sides of seven, six court players and a goalkeeper, against each other as they pass by hand and throw at the opposing goal. Karl Schelenz, Max Heiser, and Erich Konigh published its modern rules in Berlin on 29 October 1917, the date treated as the sport’s birthday.
Ball-throwing games of this kind appear on ancient Greek amphorae, Roman women played one called expulsim ludere, and the Inuit of Greenland had their own version in the Middle Ages. By the 19th century there was Danish håndbold, Czech házená, and German torball. Danish gym teacher and Olympic medallist Holger Nielsen of Ordrup grammar school wrote the first rules in 1906, and the first official match was held in Berlin on 2 December 1917.
A match runs two 30-minute halves on a 40-by-20-metre court, with goals 2 metres high and 3 metres wide. Only the defending goalkeeper may stand in the six-metre zone, though attackers may leap into it and shoot before landing, and a dashed line at nine metres marks free throws. Players may not touch the ball with their feet and may take up to three steps or hold it for three seconds without dribbling, while defenders are allowed body contact. Professional sides typically score 20 to 35 goals each.
Field handball made its Olympic debut outdoors in Berlin in 1936; indoor handball then flourished in Scandinavia and returned to the Games in Munich in 1972, and women joined in Montreal in 1976. An amateur international federation for the sport appeared in 1928, and its successor, the IHF, dates from 1946.
The men’s world championship began in 1938 and has been held every two years since 1995; the women’s began in 1957, and only South Korea and Brazil have won it from outside Europe. European teams have taken every men’s medal but one since 1938. By July 2009 the IHF counted about 795,000 teams and 19 million players, and by 2016 it had 197 member federations.
Source: Handball
