Germany’s women’s handball players celebrated an important test match victory shortly before the start of the Olympic Games – albeit by an extremely narrow margin.
A few days after the defeat against Brazil, the selection of national coach Markus Gaugisch beat Hungary in Stuttgart with 30:29 (15:11). In front of 5,022 spectators, Emily Bölk, Xenia Smits, Julia Maidhof and Antje Döll were the best German scorers with four goals each. Before that, the men had also won against Hungary with 33:29 (20:13).
The DHB women’s Olympic dress rehearsal will take place on Sunday against Brazil. Then it’s on to Paris, where the first group match against South Korea is scheduled for Thursday. Other opponents in the preliminary round are Slovenia and the Scandinavian handball strongholds Sweden, Norway and Denmark.
Again and again Katharina Filter
The DHB women got off to a bad start and were only able to keep the deficit small thanks to strong saves from goalkeeper Katharina Filter. After 20 minutes, left winger Döll rewarded her team for an improvement in performance and scored first to equalize and then to make it 9:8. Germany now played with significantly more speed and minimized the number of easy ball losses.
After the break, the hosts missed several top-class chances. The fact that the lead did not shrink was once again thanks to goalkeeper Filter. But the 25-year-old was not able to parry every shot and so the Hungarians equalized around nine minutes before the end and then even took a two-goal lead.
Thanks to Annika Lott’s last-minute goals, the Germans were ultimately able to win. “We have to take the positive side of things that we can turn a game back in our favor so quickly,” said captain Emily Bölk.
