London Olympics: Handball (preliminaries)

Huge all over the world, but no so much in the UK, Handball is a fast and thrilling team sport which promises to draw big crowds throughout the competition at London 2012. Running virtually the entire duration of the Games, the Olympic Handball competition gets underway with the preliminaries (and women's quarter-finals) at the new Handball Arena on Saturday 28 July before the focus shifts to the bigger Basketball Arena on Wednesday 8 August through to Sunday 12 August, during which the men's quarter-finals, all semi-finals and finals will be played. In short, teams of seven can pass or dribble a small leather ball with their hands with the object of scoring a goal - blending components of both football and basketball, but resulting in a frantic end-to-end game where it's not rare to see 50-odd goals a match. Some of the skill on display - such as mid-air twists, or the deft spinning of a ball around an opponent - is quite exhilarating to watch, and it's no surprise that Handball is one of the most popular sports on the planet - bigger even than football in some countries. Introduced as an Olympic sport in 1936, Handball was dropped until 1972 but has since been ever-present in the Summer Games calendar.