A snapshot from the Main Round group in Jönköping: Standing in the players’ tunnel, the players from Norway and France are waiting for the signal to enter the Kinnarps Arena. Didier Dinart, who just turned 34 and is something like the personification of the French handball success, is prancing like a young race horse in the starting box and is fooling around. Dinart, the rock in the defence of “Les Bleus” for years, is clowning around with his teammates. Havard Tveden and Christoffer Rambo also join in and start kidding around. Dinart is laid-back, and so is his team. France however have every reason to approach the match in a relaxed way, given the fact that the last loss of the “Equipe Tricolore” occurred in 2009, when they had to admit defeat to host Croatia in the WCh Preliminary Round. Apart from that it seems that nothing and no one could harm the French. In 2008 and 2010 they became European Champions; they won the 2009 World Championship final in the “lion’s den” in Zagreb against Croatia, and they were also the winners of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. France stand for pure self-confidence, playing culture on the highest level, and individual class combined with team spirit and elegance. Coach Claude Onesta was therefore quite optimistic prior to the WCh in Sweden. “We respect every opponent, but we don’t fear any team”, he said. Furthermore the competitors praised the French, labeling them as the top favourites of the tournament. It didn’t matter that two key players – Guillaume Gille and Daniel Narcisse – couldn’t join the team on their trip to Sweden. The series of wins of the French has only been interrupted once in the tournament so far. When Onesta’s team thought the victory was definite, leading 27:21 against Spain, the Iberians caught up and achieved a 28:28 draw due to a strong final phase. The French offence started to throw the ball more and more thoughtlessly and the defence didn’t make enough efforts any more. A mistake that won’t happen to Didier Dinart during this tournament again. After all, the player of Ciudad Real wants to take his next WCh title – it would be the third after 2001 and 2009