BIOGRAPHY
Ausra Fridrikas was born in Lithuania in 1967, when the Baltic state was still part of the Soviet Union. Although she only started playing handball at the age of 15 her talent was quickly identified, and she was already playing senior competitions as a 16-year-old. Fridrikas’ career was entirely based in Lithuania until she moved to Spain and then to Austria.
With the Soviet Union, Fridrikas won her only international medal - gold at the 1990 IHF Women’s World Championship. She played for Lithuania from the fall of the Soviet Union until 1995, achieving promotion for the new country from the B to A World Championship.
But joining Austrian side Hypo Niederösterreich was to prove pivotal. The club was hugely successful, formed of a number of ‘world talents’, and they won the last two editions of the EHF Champions League forerunner, the Champions Cup, followed by the first two editions of the Champions League. Fridrikas was part of the squad for the last Champions Cup win and followed it up with four Champions League titles with Hypo.
As she was playing in Austria, Fridrikas and several of her Hypo teammates took Austrian citizenship and formed Austria’s best-ever women’s team. They won bronze at the EHF EURO 1996 and again at the 1999 World Championship. Fridrikas was named MVP and best left back of the 1999 World Championship and was later elected as IHF World Player of the Year 1999. She would later add to that another MVP award from the 2001 World Championship, where she was also top scorer; and All-star left back at the EHF EURO 2002.
Fridrikas moved from Austria to Denmark in 2000, first to join Bækkelagets and then as part of the Slagelse Dream Team. With Slagelse, she won another two EHF Champions League titles as well as the EHF Cup. But her career would end back in Austria.
She retired at the age of 40, and has since become a coach - first for the Austrian women’s junior team, and more recently coaching youth and junior teams in Germany, both at professional and amateur level.
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