EHF EURO 2010: players’ health in the focus

The EHF EURO 2010 came to an end on 31 January in Vienna. The French team celebrated victory in an exceptionally high quality tournament played by 16 top European national teams and more than 250 players over a two-week period.

However, performance is not everything that matters at big sports event. Once again, the organising country and the European Handball Federation paid due attention to the health of the players and preventing injuries. A record number of rest days were introduced in order to help players fully recover from fatigue or small physical problems. Also, the EHF followed up any injuries with reports and will carry out a study of all such cases afterwards the championship.

Extensive doping control

Another measure for taking care of the health of the athletes and ensuring the purity of the game is carrying out doping controls throughout the EURO. As it is always the case at EHF top events, handballers were controlled on a regular basis during the tournament. In Austria over 60 doping controls took place after randomly selecting the players for this procedure through a draw.

The doping control procedures at the EHF EURO 2010 were supervised by the EURO anti-doping official, Prof. Hans Holdhaus. The internationally renowned sports medical expert is head of the IHF Anti-Doping Unit and a member of the Austrian Anti-Doping Committee.

All doping test results known to date have been returned negative.