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The key to the success has been<br />
the combination of long standing<br />
values with modern approaches<br />
“Whoever bears in his heart a cathedral to be built is already victorious” wrote Antoine<br />
de Saint Exupéry in 1938. This could be an apt evocation of those who, in the late 1980s<br />
came together with the idea of founding a European Handball Federation. Because their<br />
ambitions were high, they were bound to succeed. And succeed they did! Far beyond their<br />
wildest expectations.<br />
They had a vision, not a dream. For a dream, as Martin Luther King well knew, is far away<br />
from reality. A vision is an inspiration for action, an ambition which is shared, an abstraction<br />
only waiting to be made concrete.<br />
Action immediately followed the founding Congress held in Berlin in 1991 and over the<br />
past twenty five years initiatives have succeeded one another to make European handball<br />
what it is today. Those old enough (and I am one of them) to remember the various stages<br />
of the development of our sport cannot but feel giddy at the pace of its progress on our<br />
continent.<br />
Our competitions now rank among the very top sport events in Europe, our continental<br />
championships are followed all over the world and our European Cups have become mesmerizing<br />
events with a conclusion, our famous Final Fours, that has been compared to what<br />
is best in American sport.<br />
The key to this success has been the combination of long standing values with modern<br />
approaches, of shared confidence with permanent self-criticism, of democracy with efficiency.<br />
There is no doubt that the next twenty-five years will witness the further progress of European<br />
handball in a world context also characterised by the supersonic growth of our sport<br />
on all continents. May the present <strong>book</strong> be an inspiration to the next generations in their<br />
efforts. History, for us, far from being what James Joyce calls “a nightmare from which [one]<br />
is trying to awake”, is a shared treasure of immeasurable value, a guarantee of success for<br />
the future.<br />
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