Olympic medal-winning star is Hong Kong’s best kept National Games secret

It has been one of Hong Kong’s best kept sporting secrets that the city handball team’s head coach is an icon of the sport who won Olympic silver in 2012. Not that Kim Ekdahl Du Rietz fondly recalls those London Games from 13 years ago, when Sweden lost the final 22-21 to France. The 36-year-old, who will mastermind his side’s National Games campaign over the first 10 days of November at Kai Tak Arena, calls it his “proudest achievement” but one where “the disappointment was immediate and continuing”. “Whenever I thought about it I felt bitterness,” Ekdahl Du Rietz said. “I don’t carry it with me every day, but you don’t forget. .” While reaching the final was “more than we could have dreamed of,” after his team had been knocked out of World Cup qualification by Montenegro two months earlier. Equally, the guarantee of a medal “felt like someone had pulled the plug” on Swedish motivation, Ekdahl Du Rietz added. On the day of the final, there was an “overwhelming feeling” of the moment being “a bit too big”. “Everything I’d done in my life had come down to this one match,” he said. “Whatever I tried, my system didn’t activate.” By his own admission, Ekdahl Du Rietz delivered his poorest performance of the tournament. The same was true of star right-back Kim Andersson. “France were beatable, but we had two key players not having a good day,” the Hong Kong coach said. “The other players were still happy afterwards, but I remember sitting there crying.” His mixed Olympic experience was apt for a man who had a “love-hate relationship” with the game he played at the highest levels. Only consistent success in the sport prevented him from quitting for his preferred basketball at 14. After an “international breakthrough” at Sweden’s home 2011 World Championship, he was inundated with lucrative overseas offers. “Going abroad, leaving friends and family, was pretty unappealing, but I thought if I didn’t like it, I’d save the money and be home in two years,” he said. Ekdahl Du Rietz went to French side Nantes for one year, then had an initial five years with German club Rhein-Neckar Lowen. “I was always happy on the pitch, but I wanted more freedom,” he said, adding he stopped playing for Sweden to ease his schedule, but was eventually spending entire seasons “waiting for them to end so I could go on vacation”. Midway through the 2016-17 season, at just 27 years old, he announced he planned to retire at the end of the campaign. “It was my best season, I don’t know if that related to being liberated, but possibly,” Ekdahl Du Rietz said. “I probably grew too self-centred, though. In my mind, the year revolved around getting to June 10 and quitting.” A globetrotting nine months off featured stops in Liberia, Senegal, New York, New Zealand and Australia, but before long he had “missed everything around handball”. “It’s a job where you can give so much enjoyment to people … you feel needed,” he added. “I hadn’t appreciated that sport was something beautiful.” Fluent in seven languages, including Cantonese and Mandarin, the Swede said only Paris Saint-Germain or Barcelona could have convinced him to return. After PSG coach Raul Gonzalez expressed interest, Ekdahl Du Rietz played for Rhein-Neckar Lowen for three months to regain some fitness, but his first season in the French capital was “a major sporting failure”. “When I signed the contract I half-seriously said, ‘If the handball doesn’t go well, it’s going to be a well-paid French class’,” he said. “The second year on the court was not bad. I had a great time in Paris.” Driven by “the bitterness from London” to go to the Tokyo Olympics, he had also reversed his international retirement in 2018. When Covid delayed the Games by 12 months, the Swede, who had committed to a global studies degree at the Chinese University of Hong Kong from 2020, “knew that was it”. “I bought two bottles of champagne, a big steak and had a friend over for dinner,” he said. After five months in charge of Hong Kong for the Asian Games in 2023, Ekdahl Du Rietz returned in January this year to helm the team’s National Games campaign. “The first day I officially coached I was super nervous, I felt a lot of expectation,” he said. “I’m distinctly more comfortable now and have come to really enjoy it.”

Olympic medal-winning star is Hong Kong’s best kept National Games secret

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Swedish great Kim Ekdahl du Rietz poised to mastermind city handball team’s Games campaign at Kai Tak Arena

Swedish great Kim Ekdahl du Rietz poised to mastermind city handball team’s Games campaign at Kai Tak Arena