Since last December, Brazil collected two gold medals at continental level. They won the 2018 Women’s South and Central American Championship and a few months ago, they claimed gold at the Lima 2019 Pan American Games to secure a spot in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

Results do not lie and Jorge Duenas can see how his team is growing. “We are improving our defensive system and therefore it’s every time harder for our opponents to score – we are using different players and we have a variety of resources and a bigger potential in defence than we used to have.

Australia are back at the IHF Women’s Handball World Championship. They secured their spot by placing 5th at the 2018 Asian Championship in Japan, winning their decisive game versus Iran 30:24.

Co-captain Sally Potocki is the most outstanding and experienced athlete in the Oceania side. She plays her club handball for HC TSV Bayer 04 Leverkusen in the German Bundesliga and has competed at two senior World Championships: France 2007 – at the early age of 18 – and Serbia 2013 – where she top scored for Australia with 48 goals.

“The evolution of the team in this last year was notable – in the physical, technical and tactical aspects. Also, their psychology,” says Argentina coach Eduardo Gallardo. There’s always a new challenge ahead for Dady, a well-known coach in South America after his decade as coach of the men’s side, which included two consecutive Olympic Games participations and multiple gold medals at continental tournaments.

Despite injecting youth into their team as part of their ‘Road to Tokyo 2020’ plan back in 2017, Angola’s women’s handball team (known as the ‘Pearls’) and their Danish coach Morten Soubak were rewarded with their lowest-ever rank in 14 appearances at an IHF Women’s World Championship – 19th place at Germany 2017.

The current world and European champions France stand out amid the tough competition for the 24th IHF Women’s World Championship trophy. As the holders of two of the most coveted major international titles, won in 2017 and 2018, as well as the silver medallists from the 2016 Olympic Games, France have enjoyed a spectacular few years. With no significant squad or coaching changes since the historic EHF EURO trophy was captured on home ground in Paris last December, the run shows no sign of slowing. 

Argentina’s women come to Qatar 2019 looking to round off an incredible year for women’s beach handball in the South American country.

On 13 October 2018 the youth women’s side won gold in the debut of beach handball at the Olympic Games defeating Croatia 2-0 (14:10, 18:16) in the final of the 2018 Youth Olympic Games.

Vietnam’s debut at the IHF Women’s Beach Handball Championship was impressive – a ninth-place finish at Kazan 2018 saw the Asian nation announce themselves on the global stage with wins against Mexico, Thailand, USA, France and Uruguay ensuring a top 10 finish. 

More impressively, perhaps, was a shoot-out loss against the dominant Brazilians in the main round, with Vietnam nearly causing a big upset after taking the second period against the South Americans – the first they had lost up to that point.

The relatively newly-formed USA women’s beach handball team have already made a huge impact on the global stage, winning the first-ever edition of the North America and the Caribbean (NAC) Beach Handball Championship, held in Trinidad and Tobago back in July.

Their gold medal not only represented their regional authority but confirmed their ticket to Qatar 2019 with a perfect series of 2-0 victories, including a final win over Mexico.

‘Les Aigles de Carthage’ (The Eagles of Carthage), as the Tunisian women’s beach team are known, qualified through to Qatar 2019 after they won the women’s handball competition at the debut edition of the African Beach Games, held in Cape Verde in June.

They took the first-ever continental title with 2-0 wins over the host nation, Algeria, Kenya and Sierra Leone to book their ticket to Doha.

The Tunisian women have history on the global stage, having appeared in both the 2013 and 2017 World Games and the 2016 edition of the IHF Women’s Beach Handball World Championship.

A year ago, the raw emotion of losing the 5/6 placement match against Denmark at the 2018 IHF Women’s Beach Handball World Championship was clear to see on the faces of the entire Poland delegation in Kazan, Russia, as they had let the chance to book a direct ticket to the first edition of the World Beach Games slip through their hands.

However, due to runners-up Norway not taking up their qualification position at Qatar 2019, Poland were awarded the place as a substitute nation as the next best-placed team in sixth.