Dinamo Astrahan

Vasily Kudinov came up through the Astrakhan academy and left with Olympic gold in 1992 and 2000, then bronze in 2004, and his career says something about the club that raised him. Astrakhan handball traces back to 1963, though the side that carries the name today took shape in 1978 under the name Zarya, and it is still known locally as Zarya Kaspiya.

The high point came in 1990, when the club, playing as Dinamo, won the USSR Championship outright, having taken silver the year before and silver again in 1991 as the league wound down with the Soviet Union itself. Bronze followed in 1992, in what was by then a different competition in a different country.

Since the Russian Superleague began, the title has not returned. Astrakhan finished second nine years running, from 1999 to 2008, and added bronze twice more either side of it. Abroad, the closest the club has come to a European trophy was the 2003 final of the EHF Cup, then still known as the Cup Winners' Cup, where it finished runner-up.

Locally the fixture that matters is against Kaustik Volgograd, played as the Nizhnevolzhskoye derby, the Lower Volga rivalry that draws on the two cities' shared stretch of the river; Perm Medvedi is treated with the same seriousness, if less familiarity. The academy keeps sending players to Olympic squads — but the Superleague trophy that has eluded the club since 1990 has not followed them back.