With a place in the Paris 2024 Olympic Qualification Tournament potentially up for grabs, despite finishing out of the top seven at the 2023 IHF Women’s World Championship, Slovenia played their hearts out to beat neighbours Austria 32:27 in both teams’ final game of the event.

Main Round
Group II
Slovenia vs Austria 32:27 (19:14)

In the 44th minute Slovenia were cruising against the European wildcard entry Austria, 27:18 up and well on their way to maximising their goal difference.

The importance of not only the win, but the goal difference with it, was evident for Slovenia throughout a match littered with mistakes from both sides (41 turnovers in total from both teams in the game).

With the winners of the championship qualifying directly through to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, positions 2-7 moving into the Olympic Qualification Tournament – and with the already-qualified Norway and France in those positions – plus the potential of Norway winning the world championship title overall and therefore Denmark taking their automatic Olympic Games place as European runners-up – Slovenia had hopes of taking one of those Olympic Qualification Tournament places, depending on other results and some maths.

But after pushing themselves into a positive overall goal difference with that near double-digit lead with just under a quarter of the game remaining, Austria struck back, scoring five unanswered goals in the next five minutes (44-49th minute) to more than halve the difference (23:27), by the 52nd minute they were just three behind (25:28).

It was at this point that Slovenia realised any potential Olympic dream for 2024, no matter how far away, was slowly slipping through their fingers, but with a best player of the match performance from Tamara Mavsar, alongside the impressive Tjasa Stanko, Slovenia kept pushing to finish on a high, confirming third place in the group with a five-goal win.

Austria, who could only name 14 players instead of 16 for this match due to some small injuries, have performed well above expectations from any side coming in late as a wildcard and they will be looking to the future, like Slovenia, with positivity after what was almost an impossible group to qualify out of with France and Norway in.

hummel Player of the Match: Tamara Mavsar (Slovenia)