Antevski, Goran (FYR Macedonia)

Goran Antevski has been a journalist for the "Dnevnik" daily, FYR Macedonia's best selling newspaper, for eleven years. He is responsible for handball, his greatest sporting passion. As youngster he played handball, and later continued to stay connected with the sport, which is very popular in FYR Macedonia. He has been the FYR Macedonian correspondent of the EHF Champions League for four years and he is also Reuter's sports correspondent in FYR Macedonia.
 

Ambros, Ivan (Croatia)

Born on 15 September 1977, married.

I’m a sports journalist working for Croatian sports website, www.sportnet.hr, and for the official EHF Champions League website, www.ehfCL.com. I cover Croatian, Spanish matches and top handball from other countries.

The best handball event I ever witnessed was the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, where the Croatian men have beaten Germany in the final by 26:24.
 

Bruun, Peter (Denmark)

I have been working as a journalist since 1988, as a freelancer since 1997. I cover mainly sports, primarily handball and football.

Regarding football, I’m the Danish correspondent of UEFA, providing stories, match reports for the official UEFA website, www.uefa.com. I report on the Danish national teams as well as on the clubs playing in the Champions League or UEFA Cup. I also provide Danish football news for the British news agency, Press Association.

Regarding handball, I have been working for the official website of the EHF Champions League and for the Euro websites since May 2005. I also worked for the Danish magazine, Sportsfan, as well as for the website www.haandbold.com.

In my younger days I played both football and handball, but never at a particularly high level. I will never forget the match that attracted me to handball: I was 10 when I have seen the first handball game ever on TV. It was the semi-final of the 1967 World Championships in Sweden between the Soviet Union and Denmark. The Russians were clear favourites, but Denmark won 17-12 and qualified for the final – thanks to the marvellous goalkeeper, Erik Holst. From that Thursday night on, I’m hooked on handball! The Danes lost the final against Czechoslovakia, by the way…

handball.hu is a Hungarian handball portal specialised in women’s handball. It was founded in 2001 as a fan website and it was reformed in 2004. Since then, apart from our fulltime occupation, we are working with full dedication to develop the website. The staff consists of five people, but there were some changes in the “line-up”.

Three of the five founding members, Péter Bakonyi, Ildikó Balogh, Balázs Csernyik have been working for the website since 2001, while Judit Juhász and Zoltán Tóth joined in 2006.

We have been working for the official website of the EHF CL since 2005. At the moment three of us (Ildikó, Judit and Péter) contribute with articles and photos.
Of course it was a bit strange at the beginning to write reports on men’s handball, not only on the women’s matches that we know so well, but we got involved in that world as well.

Apart from this, we also work together with the bilingual (English and Hungarian) Time Out Magazine. We are proud that our job is recognised – and we can measure this recognition in the daily number of visitors that exceeded 3,500 by September 2007.

Péter Bakonyi: I was born in 1977 in Budapest. My “civil” profession is software engineer. I fell in love with handball in 1995 when I could get a ticket for a quarterfinal game of the World Championship organised in Hungary. The atmosphere of the game had a great impression on me. In the following years I have been visiting the matches of FTC and of the national team as a supporter.
In 2000 March, I bought my first digital photo camera and from supporter I have become a sport photographer step by step. Paralell to this I started to publish my photos on the web (handballphotos.com), and this has become increasingly popular with the sports press and handball fans.  I had many pictures published in Hungary and in many other countries.  In 2006 and 2007 I won third place at the IHF “Handball Photo of the Year”. The most memorable match for me was the EHF Cup Final in 2006, Podravka vs FTC, and the moments of celebration afterwards.

Ildikó Balogh: I was born in 1978 in Budapest. My job is system administrator. I also fell in love with handball during the 1995 World Championship in Hungary and I have become a huge supporter right away.
My task at handball.hu is to do interviews, monitor the news on the web and to keep the contact with our readers and media partners. I’m also trying to keep the team united and plan in advance.
The most memorable game for me was the quarterfinal of the 2000 Olympic Games that Hungary won by one goal against Austria in the extra time. And despite the defeat, the World Championship Final in Zagreb was also a great experience when 8,000 Hungarian supporters followed the team to create a marvellous atmosphere.

Judit Juhász: I was born in 1982, in Győr. I studied political sciences, but I work as a commercial executive. I was born in a sports family and I have been doing sports all my life – not handball, but I have completed the Marathon several times. I have always loved handball, as many other sports, and I started to visit games some 10 years ago.
I joined handball.hu in 2006 where I take care of the information from the German language areas. I also do interviews and write match reports for our and also for the Champions League website.
I will never forget the Dunaferr vs Viborg CL quarterfinal in 2005 when we have been watching the 7-m shoot-out and the victory of Dunaferr in Denmark.

Joncic, Sasa (Montenegro)

I’m 33-year old, just about to get married in October. I studied law, but I prefer to keep busy with sports. In my free time I play soccer and – a as a former player – especially volleyball. I also like movies and music.

I started to work as a sports journalist in 1993. My first job was at the National Radio of Crna Gora and I went to the commercial radio, Antena M (www.antenam.net) later. I covered sports already at this stage. I started to work for printed media in 1997. My first newspaper was a Montenegrin independent daily, Vijesti (www.vijesti.cg.yu). Here I worked on covering handball and volleyball until this February.

With some colleagues of mine, we started the first Montenegrin sports daily, Start (I was the editor for handball and volleyball section). Unfortunately we had to stop in June because of financial problems.

During the former state union of Serbia and Montenegro, I was the correspondent of Serbian dailies, Blic (www.blic.co.yu), and Glas javnosti (www.glas-javnosti.co.yu). Here I had a chance to do interviews with soccer legends such as Peter Shilton, Alessandro Altobellli, Stefano Tacconi... Monitor (www.monitor.cg.yu) is a Montenegrin weekly I worked for, but I also have an experience with Eurosport from 1996 during a beach soccer tournament in Budva (Montenegro).

Through handball and volleyball I had the opportunity to travel all around Europe for club and national team events. I reported from the Volleyball European Championships in Berlin (2003) and Rome (2005).

I lived many great moments in handball too. Buducnost T-Mobile reached five consecutive semi-finals in the Champions league, but the greatest game I have seen was the second leg of the Cup Winner’s Cup Final in 2006 in Győr, when Buducnost lifted the trophy. It was 20 May, just one day before the Montenegrins voted for the independence at the referendum.

Right now I’m the press officer of the Montenegrin Handball Federation, and of the volleyball team Buducnost Podgoricka banka playing in the Indesit Champions league. I’m also a volleyball CEV technical delegate.

I’m especially grateful for two titles I got during my career: Best Young Sports Journalist in 2000 and Sports Journalist of the Year 2005.