OLYMPICS LONDON 2012: Volleyball and handball rely on Games to capture hearts of youngsters

By Barrie White, Sportsbeat, London 2012

Amidst the experience of kitting out, or moving to the Olympic village, some sports still have their eye on what has always been the buzz word of these Games – legacy.

KATHRYN FUDGE: Great Britains's women's handball team begin hunt for gold medal at Copper Box on July 28

Since the Games were awarded to London in 2005, important figures, such as LOCOG chairman Seb Coe, or ministers in both Governments to oversee the event, have talked about the legacy of regeneration, of inspiration and showing to the world how Great Britain's capital will hold an Olympics to be remembered.

However, it is speaking to athletes that one gets a fuller understanding of where a legacy can, and should, be felt most.

This is not to dismiss other aspects of the London Olympics legacy – the new housing in East London allied with improvement in facilities in the area.

The BOA and LOCOG have been at pains to show that this Great Britain's Games, and not just for the people of London, and one way to measure how inclusive the Olympics have been for the UK is through participation.

There is not enough time or inclination to go through the changes to the Government's post-Games participation target figures here – that would be a whole different issue.

But there are sports, first time for Team GB in an Olympics sports, who will fight tooth nail and as hard as they would play to be considered the legacy sport – the sport most people will remember and adopt as their own after the Games are done and everyone has gone home.

From my privileged position of being able to interview nearly a third of Great Britain's hopefuls after they had been through the fantastically exciting kitting out experience, three sports stood out as the ones who felt they needed the Olympics exposure to act as a lifeblood for the sport.

Handball, volleyball and surprisingly, women's football all believed they would need the Games to act as a lightning rod to boost the participation numbers.

Most Great Britain women's players pointed to each of their three group games being live on BBC One, or the second channel at least, as a way of showing a new generation that the game is growing.

However, the exponential growth of football among boys and girls in the last ten years, as well as a strong English national team, means that women's football will continue to grow, regardless of the Team GB performance this summer.

However, it is an entirely different situation for handball and volleyball.

The similarities between the two are striking as both are indoor court sports, have similarly sized six foot plus sized athletes. In fact, both sports were part of UK Sport's ‘Sporting Giants' programme after the Games was announced.

Both sports and their key members are actively pursuing a legacy which is centred on the performances in their pool matches and reaching the top eight.

Similarly, both have got their participation targets in one place where a love for the sport can be fostered early – schools, with handball seeing their participation targets of 3,000 children playing smashed by more than three-times that.

Volleyball has pursued a policy of education and introduction in schools for the past five years and are starting to reap the benefits.

Handballers and volleyballers are sure that if children watching the Olympics, with all the streams and channels available, enjoy what they see and have a sense of pride in their nation's performance, which will capture the hearts and minds of a whole new generation of fans and players.

I hope they do, but my only worry is that the lessons of previous Olympics have not been learned and the club structures for these two sports in the UK are not in place to deal with demand.

I doubt they are and the loss of thousands of children wanting to play handball and volleyball will be a true lasting legacy of the Olympics.  

© Sportsbeat 2012