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One Man's Journey |
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One day in 1982, the telephone rang for Sasha Dimitric, a civil engineer with the state Department of Main Roads in Sydney. Normally, his work involved issues like traffic flow on the Harbour Bridge, but this time the call came from New Caledonia. The handball team wanted a match in Australia.
What followed is one man's often lonely, always passionate, journey to build a sport from scratch -- and then pursue it to an Olympic level. It is a story mirrored in many countries, in many sports, behind the scenes.
Dimitric wasn't just any engineer. He had
played for Yugoslavia's national handball team in the
1950s before leaving to fulfil his military duty. He had
played for two national champions with the famed Red
Star team in Belgrade, played in the Yugoslavia Cup,
done it all. Then he moved on to Zagreb, married,
developed family and work commitments and left the game.
Eventually, Dimitric left the country, moving on to Paris and, in 1964, to Sydney. Now, 18 years later, when the phone rang, handball had become a game in another land, from another time.
"But somebody learned about my background," he says.
He managed to scrape together a group to play the French territory's team, and then his wife Irina made what, to many, might seem her greatest mistake.
"Why don't you bring that Olympic sport to this country?" she suggested.
In Australia, handball was a game that schoolchildren played by slapping a small ball against a wall. Less frequently, adults played it too, usually wearing a glove for their faster-paced game. Almost 20 years later, it's the version that still rates as the first definition for handball in the Australian dictionary, and the popular European game gets no mention in any of the five definitions.
So, Dimitric started with transplanted Europeans.
He recruited his countrymen living in Australia -- Serbs, Croatians and Macedonians. He recruited Germans and Hungarians. Then, he relied on word of mouth from those players to uncover other Europeans.
By 1983, Dimitric had gathered enough
players to form a statewide New South Wales Handball
Association. Those players, in turn, began telling him
about players in other cities, such as Melbourne and
Brisbane. Still relying on European transplants, he put
together a wide enough network by 1985 to go national
and created the Australian Handball Federation. Dimitric knew, though, that the sport must attract native Australians to ever reach international standards. Along the way, he had talked the state's Department of Sport and Recreation into a little financial assistance, and, in his free time, he approached high schools, hoping they would take up the sport. He taught handball in physical-education courses at two universities.
"We were very keen to embrace Australians," he says.
The response has been stronger than he dared hope. Almost a century after Danish track and field athletes began playing the game for indoor exercise in the cold Scandinavian winters, and almost half a century after the Olympic Games embraced the sport, it began to take root in Australia. In 1988, the International Handball Federation (IHF) made Australia its 100th member.
The battle was far from over, though. The
national federation became affiliated with the
Australian Olympic Committee (AOC), but, without
international success, it still couldn't gain
significant funding. Without the funds to go out and
gain international exposure, the sport seemed trapped.
Dimitric kept attending congresses, lobbying
relentlessly for the right simply to play in qualifying
matches for the World Championships.
Finally, agreement came in 1990 --
partially. The men's team could try to qualify, but not
the women's. That, at least, helped pry some backing
from the AOC as the men's team prepared for the 1991
Asian Championships.
Then came another catch. Yes, Australia could participate, but the Asian countries would not let the Australians have one of the four spots for the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games if they qualified. The Australians finished second behind Japan in their pool, but could not continue into a final eight with the other teams that placed first or second in the four pools.
Dimitric had another idea. The only way around Asia, he decided, was to form the Oceania Handball Federation. AOC president John Coates and IHF secretary-general Raymond Hahn offered strong support, and, by 1992, Dimitric had enlisted New Zealand and Vanuatu. He organised the first championships in 1994, and, when Vanuatu could not make it, Australia beat New Zealand to advance to the qualifications for the World Championships.
Then, of course, no continent wanted to surrender one of its qualifying spots to Australia. Europe easily had the most, so the IHF finally assigned Australia to play the last European team to qualify. That was Romania, a four-time world champ. The Romanians won both matches, but the second was competitive enough to gain the recognition Australia sought.
When Sydney won the bid for the 2000 Olympic Games, the host nation received an automatic berth, the berth Dimitric had dreamed about since 1982. In preparation, the men gained entry into this year's 24-team World Championships, where they -- not unexpectedly -- finished last but gained the experience they craved. Now, the women get their chance in November, playing in the women's World Championships for the first time.
Perhaps because Australians began playing the game in Sydney, it has not drawn from its most natural pool of players. The tall, muscular athletes of Melbourne-based Australian Rules football fit the sport's stereotype, but Australian handball has lured more players from athletics, rugby and football. Dimitric is not complaining, though, as he watches from his new position, technical operations manager for handball with the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games.
"It's taken a lot of work, a lot of time, but it was my wife's idea," he says with a laugh. "And I'm still happily married."
Alex Gavrilovic is the man overseeing the whole handball operation for the Games. A key administrator since those early days of Australian handball, he is quick to point to Dimitric as the man who started it all.
"He certainly carried the flag," he says, "for a long while."
Ron Sutton The Sydney Morning Herald © 1999 SOCOG and IBM. All rights reserved. |
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