After the first Olympic gold medal at the Atlanta Olympics, Croatia's national handball team won a second gold at the Athens Olympic Games, with Germany and Russia taking the silver and bronze. The year before, the teammates of Ivano Balić, winner of the World Handball Player of the Year award in 2003 and 2006, also won the world handball championship in Portugal, ahead of Germany, France and Spain.
A symbol of Croatia's post-war reconstruction efforts, the 380 km A1 motorway helps connect the capital of Zagreb with the Adriatic port of Split, Croatia's second largest city. Constructed in just three years despite the mountainous areas it crosses which called for the building of numerous civil engineering structures and the drilling of tunnels, two of which are almost 6 km long, it finally brought closer together the north and the south of the country which are now only a three hours drive away. Today, Croatia has more than 1400 km of motorways, almost 1000 km of which were constructed from 1998 to 2009.