Mikkel Hansen
Katrine Lunde
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Katrine Lunde leads 3 of 4 categories. Our all-time ranking places Mikkel Hansen at #2 and Katrine Lunde at #4.
The case for Mikkel Hansen
The defining backcourt shooter of the 2010s and the player who turned Denmark from a good handball nation into the dominant one. Hansen won the IHF World Player of the Year award three times, in 2011, 2015 and 2018, matching the men's record, and collected Olympic gold in Rio in 2016 as the tournament's leading scorer, silver in Tokyo, and gold again in Paris in 2024 in the last match of his career. He was central to three consecutive world titles, in 2019, 2021 and 2023, and his European Championship came in 2012, when Denmark beat Serbia in Belgrade and he was named the tournament's most valuable player. A left-hander who shot from well beyond nine metres with a flat, ferocious release and passed like a playmaker, he won the Champions League with Barcelona in 2011 and then spent a decade as the axis of Paris Saint-Germain. He is Denmark's record international scorer and retired at 36.
The case for Katrine Lunde
The most decorated goalkeeper in handball and, by trophy count, arguably the most decorated player of any kind. Lunde won Olympic gold with Norway in 2008, 2012 and 2024, and took a medal at five consecutive Games from Beijing to Paris, where she played the final at 44. She has three world titles, in 2011, 2015 and 2021, and a stack of European Championships from the Norwegian dynasty that has now won a record ten EHF Euro crowns. At club level she won the Champions League seven times with three different employers: Viborg in 2009 and 2010, Gyor in 2013 and 2014, and Vipers Kristiansand in 2021, 2022 and 2023. Her method is positional rather than acrobatic - she reads the shooter's hips, plants early and takes up an enormous amount of visual space - and her record in 7-metre duels has decided finals for two decades. Her twin sister Kristine played alongside her for Norway.