Peculiarities of Selected Sport Performance in Women Olympic Handball

Abstract

Research background and hypothesis. Sport contest model is the main indicator of athletes’ sport performance,
which allows defining sports trends in general, predicting sports results and also designing directions for training.
Research aim was to determine the alteration of goals (as a key indicator) scored by women in Olympic handball
in order to carry out trends of modern women handball.
Research methods. Data sets were gathered from the International Handball Federation (EHF) website (http://
www.ihf-info.com) covering Olympic Games since Montreal (1976) till London (2012). The data was used from all
248 matches. Statistically significant differences between the independent samples were determined using Student’s
t-values   of the criterion of a 95% significance level.
Research  results.  In  the  period  of  36  years  women’s  handball  has  become  more  dynamic  as  teams  scored
10.2 goals more in London (25.1 ± 4.5) than in Montreal (14.9 ± 7.4). Teams representing the continent of Europe
(23.3 ± 4.2) scored 2.2 goals more on average than teams from other continents (21.1 ± 6.1) during the Olympics.
Though the mastery of European teams was better than that of others, the South Korean team, representing the Asian  continent, is the first in the rating ranks scale.
Discussion and conclusions. Referring to the differences between scored and missed goals by teams which were  ess compared Montreal and London Olympic Games we suggest that the mastership of women’s handball is going  up and becoming more equal. The phenomenon of South Korean team has allowed to state that the final results in
modern women’s handball might be determined not only by the body composition but by other indices of a team or  of an individual player’s fitness as well.

Keywords: women’s elite sport, key indicators in team handball, national analyses.