Rafik Tahraoui excited to represent Great Britain at the 2012 London Olympics – Handball News
The energetic British handball player is hopeful to enter the Olympic Games next year. The 22-year-old Rafik Tahraoui has been giving his best shot to train himself for the sport and to enter the biggest sporting event in 2012.
For the last few years, Tahraoui, has been eyeing a place in the Great Britain handball team which he was finally succeeded in making. This was a huge step in Tahraoui’s career. The young player was part of the Great Britain’s
polo side. He was getting his training on a full time basis, which was part of the 2012 Olympic training program.
It is interesting to note that Tahraoui was never part of any handball team before. He wanted to play for Algeria, his home country, but due to some reasons he could not. Later, he met with Bill Baillie, the handball coach for
the team Great Britain. For Tahraoui, getting trained for handball from scratch was not that difficult. First, he was passionate to play the sport and second, he had been playing polo and basketball, two sports that helped him in getting in tune with handball.
For Tahraoui, playing handball also has an emotional aspect to it. Tahraoui’s maternal grandfather, Charles Brand, was also a professional handball player who played for the Great Britain national handball team.
What inspired Tahraoui was the legacy that he wanted to follow as his grandfather too, represented Great Britain in the Olympic Games. In the 1948 London Olympic Games, Brand was the captain of the Great Britain polo team.
In the 1952 Olympic Games, Brand was again playing polo in the Olympic Games as the captain of his team. Tahraoui said, “My granddad was a two-time Olympian, so my brother and I have been brought up to play sport…My original aim
was to play water polo in the next London Olympics, like my grandfather but I switched to handball and I’m now on the right track.” Tahraoui got his training for handball in a period of five to six months. His passion to play the sport gave him the insights
of the game. His grandfather’s legacy is alive in his heart, which he aims to follow by becoming part of the Great Britain handball team in the 2012 London Olympics.
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