Seven thousand miles away from Rio de Janeiro, a desert state with fewer inhabitants than Manchester is pinning its hopes of a first Olympic gold medal on five men from the Balkans, a couple of Syrians, one from Cuba, a Spaniard and a Frenchman.

The Qatar handball team might be 108th in the global handball rankings, but they are still one of 13 teams competing at Rio 2016, their campaign beginning today with a game against Croatia. But this is no ordinary sporting fairy tale. Qatar have been carefully constructing their squad for years in an attempt to finally break into the Olympic elite, scouring the planet for talent and paying millions of pounds for the privilege.

Their roster for Rio features champions such as Bertrand Roine, a gold medal winner at the 2011 World Championships with France; Danijel Saric, a Bosnian-Serb ranked the world’s fifth best goalkeeper, and Montenegro’s Zarko Markovic, top scorer and the key to Qatar’s silver medal-winning campaign at the 2015 World Championships, which they hosted and which proved to be the first since their conception in 1938 when a non-European team won a medal.