or1980v2pt1

Handball
The handball matches were held
from July 20 through 30 in the Sokolniki
Palace of Sports (6,800 seats) and
the Dynamo Palace of Sports (5,000
seats).
The arenas were covered with
Taraflex Sport M synthetic surfaces
supplied by BAT Taraflex of France.
The score-keeping equipment included
two bulb letter-digital
scoreboards (12 lines of 36 characters
each) produced by Electroimpex/Fok-
Dyem, Videoton, VBKM-Villesz of Hungary
and a specialised scoreboard
displaying the score and time.
The tournament used Bang balls
for women's teams and Jet balls for
men's teams (all supplied by Adidas of
France), Soviet-made goals, and goal
nets and back-stop nets produced
by Bridport Gundry Ltd. of Great
Britain.
The competition was managed by
the Commission of Organising and
Competition of the International Handball
Federation (IHF). The Commission
appointed one official commissioner
and two technical representatives of
the IHF. There was a total of 56 IHF
technical officials from 20 countries,
including 5 from the USSR.
227
Sixty-two Soviet support officials
took part in the conduct of the tournament.
The IHF had decided to stage the
Olympic handball tournament according
to the previously established procedure.
Twelve men's teams competed in
the tournament. They had been
selected by the IHF on the basis of the
latest world championship before 1980
and continental championships. 6
women's teams had been selected on
the basis of the latest world championship
and the selection tournament
for teams from Africa, America, and
Asia. All in all, there were 252 competitors
from 14 countries.
The competitions for men consisted
of a preliminary round and a
final round. Placed in two groups, the
teams played each other team of the
group in a round. In the final round,
the winners of the groups played
against each other for the first and
second places, second-placed teams
from each group contested with each
other for the third and fourth places,
etc.
Women's teams had a single-round
competition.