Handballsport#

Handball: At first played along lines similar to that of football. From 1920 handball took the same development as in Germany and became part of track-and-field events played by both men and women. At the Olympic Games 1936 the Austrian men´s team won a silver medal. 1923-1969 the Wiener Danubia club achieved international success. Indoor handball, from Scandinavia, did not become popular in Austria until the late 1960s (national league 1969/70). This accounted for Austria´s early lack of international success in indoor handball. In the 1970s G. Prokop, with the help of foreign coaches and women players, established the "Hypobank Suedstadt" club and put Austria back on the map (European masters champions 1989/90 and 1992-1994; several times Danube Cup winners). 1992/93 most successful season of Austrian handball (qualification for the world championships for women, men, male and female junior competitors, title of student world champion). Vienna has been home to the headquarters of the International Handball Federation since 1992. The Austrian Handball Federation (Oesterreichischer Handballbund OeHB), founded in 1925, comprises (1993) 121 clubs with 11,611 members.

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