Interview: Lynn McCafferty is getting all hands on for 2012

She has put her life very much on hold to pursue her Olympic dream but insists it will be worth it when she leads out the GB handball team in London next year

A GADGET on Lynn McCafferty’s refrigerator door, counting down the days until next summer’s Olympic Games, reminds her every morning of the reason for her existence. So much has she given up to captain Great Britain’s handball team at London 2012 that it cannot come soon enough. Not only will she achieve the ambition that has driven her these last few years, she will get back the life that she has sacrificed in the process.

The 33-year-old Scot has forsaken just about everything for the Olympics – friends, job and for long, lonely spells, her husband, Gary, who has been at home in Cumbernauld, working all hours, while she has been abroad, improving her game in the professional leagues. Since moving to Denmark five years ago so that she could participate in Great Britain’s World Class Handball Programme, she and Gary have scarcely seen each other, never mind gone on the honeymoon that should have followed their wedding in January 2007.

Now that the squad are based at Crystal Palace, the couple see a bit more of each other. Once a month maybe, if they’re lucky. Before that, they were apart for much longer, consoled only by 2012, and the lifetime they would share after it. It is just as well for Lynn that Gary, himself a former handball player, understands her obsession. “There was one time when it went as long as ten weeks. That was horrible. After that, we made sure we would see each other, even if it was just for a day or two. It is very hard, especially when you have had a bad day at training. And financially, it has been really challenging.

“We’ve been together for ten years now, and for five of them we’ve been apart, but it’s such a massive goal for us. People think that what we’re doing is extraordinary, but we make it work because we know that we will be together at the end of it. We know that it will raise the profile of handball in Britain and, of course, we get to be part of the Olympic Games. It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that you just can’t pass up.”

So intense has it all been that McCafferty doesn’t know whether to be happy or sad that the end of a long, hard road is in sight. Her weary limbs will be as relieved as her husband, but the return to a normal life will be an emotional transition. “My body is hating me right now, with all the training and the injuries. I’m not getting any younger. But the experience leading up to it has been awesome. OK, it’s been a rollercoaster, but I couldn’t have asked for a better five years. It will be so sad to let it go.”

At this point, McCafferty pauses to hold back the tears. Since she was at primary school, she has been passionate about handball, despite Scotland’s ignorance of it. In all those years with the Tryst 77 club in Cumbernauld, she never dreamed that she would play for a professional club in Scandinavia, the sport’s traditional heartland. She never expected to live in a country where her love of the game was understood.

It is huge over there. Denmark won three straight gold medals at the Olympic Games until Norway triumphed in 2008. Top domestic matches, broadcast live on TV, attract crowds of up to 12,000 in purpose-built arenas. Bojana Popovic, arguably the best female player in the world, was reputed to be earning half a million euros a year from the Danish club, Viborg.

Not that McCafferty has been lining her pockets. When UK Sport funding was cut in 2009, the programme was compromised, forcing her to look elsewhere for a contract. To her great credit, she secured one in Italy, where she earned ¤1,000 a month from a lower-division club. She has also supplemented the family income with the odd part-time job, one of which was cleaning out showers at the sports academy where she trained.

Unfortunately, for all their efforts, the team are not as strong as they had hoped. When the plan was hatched to build two elite teams from scratch – one men’s, one women’s – the project was compared to that which earned South Korea’s handball teams gold and silver medals at the 1988 Olympics. Now, with reduced funding, and a group of a players who are smaller and less physical than the favourites, the GB teams are promising only to be competitive.

“We will push to go as far as we can but, if you were to see the top four teams in the world and then see us, you would see how it is physically impossible for us to get there. We are training really hard to get fitter, faster and stronger but we can’t rely on height and power like the Russians can. We’re trying to find different ways to get round that. Our aim has always been a top-eight finish. I think that’s still realistic. With the home crowd and everything else, you never know.”

The objective now is to justify handball’s selection as a “legacy sport”. McCafferty is convinced that the British public will take to the game, described by some as “water polo without the water”. The ball, coated in resin to improve grip, is thrown at speeds of up to 90mph. Fast and furious, it’s a bit like basketball but there are goals instead of hoops and the tackling is not for the faint-hearted. Tales abound of women growing their nails so that they can scratch opponents. McCafferty has broken her hand, her elbow, her foot and, most recently, suffered a cartilage tear that required surgery after a challenge that removed her shoulder from its socket. “There is a lot of contact, a bit like rugby, but not so aggressive. It’s so fast and explosive that you can’t take your eyes off it for a minute. The power is amazing but it is beautiful as well. It is aesthetically pleasing, the way wingers spin it in from the side,” enthuses McCafferty.

When the Games are over, she and Gary will set about enjoying the rest of their lives. After their long-awaited honeymoon, in Mexico, the former health and fitness instructor plans to get herself a job. Something for Glasgow at the Commonwealth Games would be good, followed by anything that allows her to continue her love affair with handball. “I can’t ever see my life without it,” she says, “even after the Olympics.”

• Lynn McCafferty was speaking ahead of the BT British Olympic Ball on 7 October, a crucial fundraiser for Team GB in the run up to the London 2012 Olympic Games. BritishOlympicBall.com