The Icelandic national team in women’s handball lost against the standing world champions, Russia, 30-19, in Brazil yesterday. Iceland thereby completed their participation, placing 12th in their first World Championship.
Karen Knútsdóttir, who scored the most goals for Iceland, in an interview on sport.is in June.
Iceland’s achievement with a match win ratio of 60 percent before the game against Russia is considered to be good; they qualified for the 16-team playoffs after a 23-16 victory against China on Friday, visir.is reports.
Iceland played well in the first part of the game against Russia, leading by two goals, 4-2, early on. Russia didn’t gain the lead until the score 7-6 and led by just three goals at half time, 15-12.
“I thought we could do good things judging by the start of the game,” said Karen Knútsdóttir, who scored four goals for Iceland.
“It wasn’t any different to play against this team than Montenegro, Norway or Germany. We just needed more poise in our game and to make fewer errors, and then anything could have happened,” she added.
Iceland managed to reduce the gap to two goals, 18-16, at 11 minutes before half-time. Then Russia scored five goals in a row and again at the score 23-16 while Iceland lost its game.
Click here to read more about Iceland’s performance at the World Championship.
ESA
