Olympics men’s handball quarterfinals results: August 17
2016 Rio Olympics men’s handball results from the four quarterfinals matches played on Wednesday, August 17 at the Games
After what was a wild preliminary round in the 2016 Rio Olympics men’s handball competition, the quarterfinals began on Wednesday. There was jockeying for position right until the very last match in the group stage, so Day 12 was the day to find out if that ultimately mattered or not.
The host nation of Brazil started off the day trying to be the Cinderella of the tournament by knocking off a loaded French team. Through the first half and about the first 10 minutes of the second half, Brazil was able to keep the match quite close and have hope of staying alive. However, the French attack began to swell and the Brazilians didn’t have an answer on either end. France pulled away for the 34-27 win to move on to the semifinals.
Germany vs Qatar was up next in the quarterfinals with the latter being the heavy underdog. However, Qatar came into this competition as a dark horse to win a medal, so there was hope that they could still shock the Germans. Of course, that wasn’t in the cards. The Germany defense was stifling throughout the match and Qatar had no answers for their attack. Germany moved on to face France in the semis with a 34-22 victory.
Denmark then looked to finally play up to their potential after an inconsistent run in pool play. Mikkel Hansen and company jumped out to a big lead over a talented Slovenia team in the first half and continued their gameplan throughout. Despite not getting blown out, Slovenia couldn’t make up any ground on the Danes. Denmark will now have a shot at a medal after a 37-30 victory.
Capping off the quarterfinals was the closest match of the day with Croatia and Poland. Croatia was expected to roll over a Poland team that just barely scraped by to get into the quarters. However, the Polish squad looked like a completely different team on Wednesday. They used a huge offensive showing from Karol Bielecki with 12 goals scored to pull off the huge upset, 30-27.
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Now it’s time for the semifinals on Friday where France and Germany will face off in addition to Poland and Denmark. If the quarterfinals are any indication, you won’t want to miss those two matches.