Lars Stefan Lövgren (born 21 December 1970) is a Swedish former

handball Handball (also known as team handball, European handball, Olympic handball or indoor handball) is a team sport in which two teams of seven players each (six outcourt players and a goalkeeper) pass a ball using their hands with the aim of thr ...

player. He was born in

Gothenburg Gothenburg ( ; ) is the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, second-largest city in Sweden, after the capital Stockholm, and the fifth-largest in the Nordic countries. Situated by the Kattegat on the west coast of Sweden, it is the gub ...

. Making his debut in the national team in

1993 The United Nations General Assembly, General Assembly of the United Nations designated 1993 as: * International Year for the World's Indigenous People The year 1993 in the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands had only 364 days, since its ...

, he played a total of 268 games and scored 1138 goals. He was included in the

European Handball Federation The European Handball Federation (EHF) is the umbrella organisation for European handball. Founded on 17 November 1991, it is made of 50 member federations and two associated federations (England and Scotland), and is headquartered in Vienna, Au ...

Hall of Fame in 2023.

Career

During his adult career he played for

Redbergslids IK Redbergslids IK (RIK), is a professional handball team from Gothenburg, Sweden founded in 1916. Redbergslid is the most successful club in Sweden, having won 20 Swedish Championship titles. Home games are played in Prioritet Serneke Arena. Red ...

(in Gothenburg), and German sides TV Niederwürzbach and Champions League- and Bundesliga-winning team

THW Kiel THW Kiel is a professional handball club from Kiel, Germany. Currently, they compete in the Handball-Bundesliga and are the record champion with 23 titles. 2007 and 2012 were the most successful years in the club's history, as THW completed t ...

. He was the captain of the national team during the period 1996–2006 and for THW Kiel 2001–2009. He is a five-time Swedish league champion with Redbergslid, and a seven-time Bundesliga champion with THW. He won the German cup four times, and he helped lead Kiel to the European Champions League title in 2007 (being a finalist in 2000, 2008 and 2009). Lövgren was World Champion in

1999 1999 was designated as the International Year of Older Persons. Events January * January 1 – The euro currency is established and the European Central Bank assumes its full powers. * January 3 – The Mars Polar Lander is launc ...

with the national team and is one of the few players to have participated in all the gold medal-winning Swedish sides in the European Championships (

1994 The year 1994 was designated as the " International Year of the Family" and the "International Year of Sport and the Olympic Ideal" by the United Nations. In the Line Islands and Phoenix Islands of Kiribati, 1994 had only 364 days, omitti ...

1998 1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The ''Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for Lunar water, frozen water, in soil i ...

2000 2000 was designated as the International Year for the Culture of Peace and the World Mathematics, Mathematical Year. Popular culture holds the year 2000 as the first year of the 21st century and the 3rd millennium, because of a tende ...

2002 The effects of the September 11 attacks of the previous year had a significant impact on the affairs of 2002. The war on terror was a major political focus. Without settled international law, several nations engaged in anti-terror operation ...

). As an individual player, he was named Most Valuable Player in both the 1999 and

2001 The year's most prominent event was the September 11 attacks against the United States by al-Qaeda, which Casualties of the September 11 attacks, killed 2,977 people and instigated the global war on terror. The United States led a Participan ...

World Championships, was top scorer in the Olympic Games in 2000 and provided the most assists during the

2005 World Men's Handball Championship The 2005 World Men's Handball Championship was the 19th team handball World Championship. It was played in Tunisia from 23 January to 6 February 2005. The winner of the gold medal was Spain, Croatia took silver and France won the bronze. Venu ...

in what proved to be his final major tournament. He is a former member of the IHF Athletes Commission, and is one of the most respected players in team handball (with, among others, Nikola Karabatić citing him as a role model both as a person, player and captain). Lövgren is a two-time Olympic silver medalist. In the 1996 Atlanta games, the Swedish team won the silver medal with Lövgren playing all seven matches and scoring a total of 17 goals. Four years later in Sydney Sweden again won silver. Lövgren played all eight matches and scored 51 goals. In January 2010, Lövgren returned to the US to play in the Big Apple Team Handball Tournament where he competed with a group of European all-stars against the reigning US club champions, New York City THC. Lövgren and the all-stars won 39-27. Lövgren lives in Kungälv outside Gothenburg with his wife and their two children.

World championships

1995 1995 was designated as: * United Nations Year for Tolerance * World Year of Peoples' Commemoration of the Victims of the Second World War This was the first year that the Internet was entirely privatized, with the United States government ...

– bronze *

1997 Events January * January 1 – The Emergency Alert System is introduced in the United States. * January 11 – Turkey threatens Cyprus on account of a deal to buy Russian S-300 missiles, prompting the Cypriot Missile Crisis. * January 1 ...

– silver *

– gold *

– silver

European Championships

– gold *

– gold

Olympic Games

1996 1996 was designated as: * International Year for the Eradication of Poverty Events January * January 8 – A Zairean cargo plane crashes into a crowded market in the center of the capital city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo ...