The nicest anecdotes about the 50th Yellow Cup: When handball players from the Eastern Bloc were stopped at customs

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Four to six handball teams and Yellow Winterthur as organizer work hard – the basic structure of the Yellow Cup has not changed during 50 events. And yet today’s tournament – especially in terms of size and professionalism – cannot be compared to the early years. “The move from the Eulachalle to the Axa Arena makes many things easier for the current OC, but it is a completely different challenge,” says Peter “Baldo” Lattmann, who was tournament boss from 1975 to 2010.

It is not a given that the Yellow Cup will take place for the 50th time this week. Just three years after its founding, the tournament was in danger, Lattmann recalls: “We didn’t have enough spectators. The Yellow Cup should have raised some money for the club’s coffers. The uptick came when we moved the pre-season date to the week of the old year. This gave us more attention because, apart from the Spengler Cup, there were hardly any sporting events taking place.”

For a long time, most club teams participated. “My goal was to have, in addition to the Swiss, a team from Western Europe, an exotic team and a representative from the Eastern Bloc in Winterthur,” Lattmann explains. The Eastern European teams in particular regularly caused a stir. “A Hungarian team was stopped by customs on the first day of the tournament because 500 bottles of champagne were found in the team bus,” says Lattmann. Only through the intervention of the tournament organizers at customs did the Hungarians get off the bus and onto the field just in time. The drinks could be picked up again on the return journey.

The stars loved coming to Winterthur

The highlight was the visit of the South Korean junior team, which was founded with a view to the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul. Lattmann: “The Koreans were in Europe for the first time and most of them drank their first sip of alcohol in Winterthur. No wonder they serenaded us on the tournament banquet stage.” One of these Koreans would shoot Yellow’s city rival, Scout Winterthur, to five championship titles in a row in the 1990s. His name: Jae-won Kang.

In the past, the traditional banquet after the tournament was at least as important as the games themselves. To celebrate even longer, Talant Dujshebaev, the big star of the 90s, even whistled at his coach’s tattoo. And Lattmann and the tournament OC had prepared extra lamb for a team from Algeria. “Once the lamb was gone, they ate all the other food.”

Such stories are unthinkable today. “The Yellow Cup became truly professional thanks to the collaboration with the Swiss Handball Federation in the early 2000s,” says tournament icon Lattmann. “And yet not a single helper has ever charged a cent for his work.”

Source : Blick