The Handball European Championship 2012 is underway in Serbia. That’s fun. I remember the book SuperFreakonomics having a chapter about birthdays of pro soccer players. They tend to be born in January. Generally, the reason is that those born early in the year are, on average, more physically mature among their peers. I looked at similar stuff for handball. Here’s a full list of all the participants in an Excel file EHF2012. You can see the month-birth-chart in the file. However, there’s something a bit more interesting. The international Handball Federation hold two types of major youth tournaments: Under 19 and under 21. Both are held in odd years and both use birth years for age limits. Thus in the last IHF Under 21 world cup, held in 2011, players had to be born 1990 or later in order to participate. The one before that: 1988, then 1986 etc. Thus, players born on odd years have less chance of playing in youth squads as they on average have to compete against older players. Does this trend translate into the adult years? Some things seem to indicate it. Here’s a chart showing the birth years of all Euro-2012 players, from all the 16 participating teams.
As you can see there are “gaps” in the odd years, 1981, 1983, 1985 and 1987.
This is not a very detailed stats analysis, just to be clear. But maybe its worth a further look.