Qatar’s Borja Vidal reacts during the Qatar 2015 24th Men’s Handball World Championship quarter-final match between Qatar and Germany at the Lusail Multipurpose Hall outside Doha.

By Sports Reporter/Doha

It is equally unlikely that Qatar national team line player Borja Vidal Fernández, would, at 34, be playing handball at a World Championship at all, given that he was a professional basketball player until 2006, the year he decided to make a switch in sporting direction.
“There wasn’t any special reason for my change from basketball to handball,” Vidal says.
“I tried to play handball, I liked it more than basketball and I changed. The change wasn’t really a hard situation. However it was difficult to adapt to handball, to the training sessions and to the differences between the two sports.”
It was none other than Valero Rivera, Qatar’s current national team coach, who persuaded Vidal to shift his sporting focus.
At the time, Vidal was playing in Spain’s first basketball league with CAI Zaragoza, after stints with Melilla, Bilbao and some teams in the Italian league. Rivera was the team manager of Balonmano Aragon.
At 191 cm tall and weighing in at 120 kg, Rivera saw in him some special physical characteristics.
“From the first moment, Valero was an important person in my career and remains so now,” Vidal says. “He is a guarantee of success. I can’t say anything bad about him.”

FEELING AT HOME
Vidal feels at home on a handball court and is especially please for the chance to play in a world championship with Qatar. Particularly in a situation in which the coach who introduced him to the handball world is the same person who has helped provide a world championship experience.
“It’s a great situation,” Vidal says. “With handball, to go and train and play is the best part of the day for me.
“That’s something that I didn’t feel as a basketball player. The only thing is that when I started to play handball, the economic crisis was going on in Spain and it was difficult because sometimes we didn’t earn money.”
Vidal knows that way ahead is going to be a difficult one for Qatar. But it has been an enjoyable journey so far. And he has good reason as this is just the beginning of his dream, one that has come true.