11.12.2016 Views

ehf_25yers_book_webversion

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

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 />

9

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!