It was, Scott Frew admits, one of those moments in which every step and every sound seemed as if in slow motion. The ever-faster pounding of his heart, the anxious anticipation as he strode down to learn his fate. "I could see a few guys in my position had got good news," he recalls.

"That was a nerve racking moment. I was thinking okay, that's my odds cut'. I walked in to talk to the two coaches. They told me they'd never seen me look this nervous but then they put me out of my misery with the good news."

Alesha Dixon, eat your heart out. While the Mis-teeq minx's endeavours have been strictly for fun, Frew's feet have barely touched the ground since the judges confirmed his place on Great Britain's newly created handball team. Not bad for a 21-year-old who had never even seen the sport before spotting a newspaper ad seeking tall people' with a modicum of athlete ability. 300 applied, and without aid of red buttons or phone votes, eight have been left standing at the end of a vigorous and intensive three-month training programme.

The consequence is that, from the New Year, Frew will place his studies at Strathclyde University on hiatus and opt out of playing for Scottish Basketball League outfit Troon Tornadoes, in favour of a move to Denmark's National Handball Academy. There he will be a Lottery-funded member of Great Britain's squad in the making for the 2012 Olympic Games, receiving daily coaching and regular competition against players steeped in the sport from infancy. The hard work, he admits, will then truly begin.

"I'm glad to be home now and get a break, knowing that in two weeks' time, there'll be no more lying in of a morning," Frew concedes.

"Then it will be eat, sleep, breathe handball. And it will be easier over in Denmark because I'll be surrounded by it. You can watch it on TV, go to a game. And the good thing is I won't be alone. There'll be 18 British guys there and we'll all have the same problems or challenges.

"It's been tough so far, especially at the beginning. I had to shake off what I knew from basketball and almost go back to playing rugby, with the full contact aspect of that. The training was very basic at the start but it got more intense as the weeks went on. And every day, you could feel things coming together. We watched a video of our first day and our last, when we had a game out in Denmark. That really showed how far we'd all come and that we were all handball players now."

The incentive of pulling on a British jersey in east London five years hence has driven all onwards. Fellow Scots Stuart Clarke and Donald Seed failed to make the elite group but will continue in the programme, retaining hopes of earning an Academy spot.

"We'll have 14 in Denmark and about the same back here," outlines Lorraine Brown, British Handball's performance chief. "The challenge for us is to keep them on track. Their progress so far has been amazing, given that they've only had about 80 hours worth of development work."

There were moments, Frew reveals, when he felt he was performing more like Fiona Phillips than Matt Di Angelo. One step forward, two steps back. "The turning point for me," he reveals, "was when, in about the third week, I sat down with our sports psychologist. He put everything into perspective and helped me focus.

"Since I'd been out playing in America, I'd never had to get up every morning and do things this intense. It was good to hear that I could do this because I'd been doubting myself. There were so many thoughts about the Olympics and once I'd relaxed, I was able to enjoy being there. And I was told they could see the difference when I went out in practice."

Fast forward six months, and he could be ball-dancing like a Dane. One step, and improvement, at a time, he says. "If I do that, I'll be okay."