Talant Dujshebaev
Jackson Richardson
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Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Talant Dujshebaev leads 2 of 4 categories. Our all-time ranking places Talant Dujshebaev at #10 and Jackson Richardson at #12.
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The case for Talant Dujshebaev
Born in Frunze in Soviet Kyrgyzstan, Dujshebaev won Olympic gold with the Unified Team in 1992, took Spanish citizenship, and then won Olympic bronze for Spain in 1996 and 2000 - a career that traced the political redrawing of the sport. He was named IHF World Player of the Year twice, in 1994 and 1996, as a centre back of unusual physical power who could shoot from nine metres and defend the middle of a 6-0 for a full match, a combination that barely exists now. He spent his best club years in Spain with Teka Santander and Ciudad Real, in the period when the Spanish league was the strongest in the world. His second career made him more influential still: as a coach he took Kielce to the Champions League title in 2016, and both his sons, Alex and Daniel, became Spanish internationals. Few people have shaped three handball nations.
The case for Jackson Richardson
The face of French handball before France became a superpower. Born on Reunion, Richardson was a centre back of dazzling acceleration and improvisation who was named IHF World Player of the Year in 1995, the year Les Barjots won France's first world title in Iceland. He won a second with the next generation, Les Costauds, in 2001 on home soil, and bracketed his career with Olympic medals sixteen years apart: bronze at Barcelona in 1992 and, at 39, gold at Beijing in 2008 in his final tournament, the medal that three decades of French handball had been building toward. His dreadlocks, his refusal to leave the French league for most of his prime and his status as the first genuinely famous handball player in France made him a national figure well beyond the sport. Everything France won in the decade after 2008 was built on foundations he laid.