– It is embarrassing. I’m ashamed that I didn’t make it. Karoline Olsen sits with tears in her eyes as she talks to news. The 25-year-old has for the first time decided to talk openly about what she is struggling with. Few people know how she has been doing for quite some time now. It is not so easy to understand if you only see the facade. On the outside, Karoline Olsen is a cheerful, upbeat and well-liked southern girl who succeeds in everything she does. Professional handball player. Trained social worker. In addition, she is a lover of Olympic champion Anders Mol and best friends with the world’s best handball player Henny Reistad. She has a family that loves her. Surely she has nothing to complain about? Karoline Olsen finds herself in a desperate personal situation. Photo: Ksenia Novikova / news It’s also not that long ago that everything looked much brighter. In the summer of 2019, Karoline Olsen clicked into the fresh national team squad that had just been announced. She was just going to check who came along. Heidi Løke. Camilla Herrem. Silje Solberg … Karoline Olsen? She got quite the chin drop when, for the first time, her name was on the list of selected players for Norway’s A national handball team. A dream had just come true. All the years of toil and hard work were finally paying off. Not least: Just before the national team selection, she had just won bronze in the Champions League with the Vipers. All career arrows pointed upwards. Karoline Olsen from the glory days in Vipers. Now she can no longer play handball. Photo: Fredrik Varfjell / Bildbyrån But at the same time as she felt enormous joy and pride at being accepted into the most generous company, there was a devil standing on her shoulder and screaming something in her ear that she really doesn’t want to hear. She realized, in the midst of all the joy and jubilation, that she was never going to participate in that national team meeting. The Kristiansand girl had struggled for so long with a shoulder that she was unable to keep it in check. No matter how hard she tried, she reluctantly realized that she had no business being on a handball court in that condition. With sadness and despair, she took out her mobile phone and took the heavy phone to national team manager Thorir Hergeirsson. She remembers it as cruel to report failure. Little did she know that this was just the beginning. First she operated on her shoulder, but when she was nearing the end of an almost two-year training period, her knee suddenly started to wobble. Then it was back to the operating room. A blow in the face, but even after two failed knee operations, she simply refused to give up and decided to devote an entire year to pure training. Even when her contract with Vipers expired in 2022, she continued to train hard to overcome the knee injury. She was determined to overcome the ailments. But: After four years of injury problems, she had to admit it: The injuries won. She still can’t run. Career is over. She realizes that she will never return as a professional handball player. Karoline Olsen is fully aware that it is only sport, and that many people have it tougher, but for her life has fallen to the ground. – I have put in all the work I could, and it still doesn’t work. I just feel stupid, she says today. WHAT NOW: Karoline Olsen no longer has an affiliation in the handball hall. It’s tough to deal with. Photo: BILDBYRÅN NORWAY The embarrassment, which after all is not her fault, is still the least of the problems. She has ended up in what she calls an identity crisis. Handball has always been synonymous with Karoline Olsen, now she sits with a feeling of not knowing who she is. The 25-year-old’s mental health has taken a brutal turn. – I have had several breakdowns related to panic attacks. It is not dangerous for me not to be a handball player, but for my psyche it can be perceived as dangerous. Sometimes, when I don’t have the handball, it feels like I’m completely in the unknown. Everyday life has suddenly become very demanding for the young Christiansander. The “triggers” are everywhere. If she is on a trip to the store and sees the Vipers bread, where her image characterizes the entire design, she soon notices that her body tenses up. Then she just has to get away. Karoline Olsen graces the center stage on the Vipers bread. Photo: Facsimile Mesterbakeren She has not seen a single minute of Vipers’ matches, either on TV or from the stands, since she had to retire. She has still not been able to enter Aquarama, the hall that was her workplace for a long time. Absolutely everything that reminds her of what handball life could have been, creates such a negative reaction in her that the blinds go down. Karoline Olsen is standing in front of the handball hall, but can’t bear to go in. It also showed during one of the interviews with news. When the Vipers song was played on a mobile phone it didn’t take long for the tears to flow. – This is what I want to avoid. That’s why I don’t go out when there are Vipers activities in town, I think it’s such a pain. I have such a heart for the club. Even though I associate that song with the best memories, I get a lump in my stomach when I hear it. This is how former handball player Karoline Olsen reacts when the Vipers song is played. Actually, she just wants to escape from everything to do with sports. But that’s not how it works when the boyfriend is the volleyball star Anders Mol and the best friend is Henny Reistad. When the girlfriend does well in tournaments, she sometimes bursts into tears. She doesn’t understand why, it just happens. To this day, she can’t watch her best friend play. When Reistad was named the world’s best handball player in May this year, Karoline Olsen had a complete breakdown. She ended up hyperventilating on the bathroom floor and completely collapsed. The reaction did not come because the best friend experienced success, but because it made her think about what she herself will never get to know. She will never again experience the rush of happiness that only top sport can give her. – It’s the sports person in me who gets jealous and finds it difficult to see others do things I can’t do. Even if it’s my best friend. And I don’t want to be that best friend. I want to cheer and support. – You feel like a bad friend? – I have felt like a bad friend in recent years, especially the last one. I know Henny understands why. But I still feel guilty. Now she is afraid of losing them, if she does not deal with the problems. – Because if I’m going to be the person I’ve been at my worst, then I don’t give anything to anyone, then I’m of no use to anyone. – What do you mean? – If I can’t get out of the hole, smile and have a good time… If I can’t accept joy, then it will just be a dark hole. Dark for me and everyone around me, she replies. Henny Reistad, who has had a great career in recent years, is Karoline Olsen’s best friend. Photo: Tor Erik Schrøder / NTB She has started talking to a psychologist to overcome her problems. The psychologist believes she is in a grieving process. It’s not the first time in her 25-year life that she’s grieved, but it’s the first time she’s grieved over something, not someone. She believes that the solution to moving forward may be to find identity in something new, something else that gives her passion and drive, but has no idea what that should be. What often triggers the breakdowns is linked to situations where she is forced to face reality. For example, when she is with her boyfriend at volleyball tournaments and it is getting close to returning home alone to Norway and her own everyday life: Then the questions come: “What is my everyday life, what exactly am I going home to?” – Yes, I have a family and a boyfriend, but I cannot live through others. And that’s when it comes. Then the body tenses up, the heart beats and things just feel scary and strange, she says. Anders Mol has a lot of compassion for Karoline Olsen’s situation. Photo: Ksenia Novikova / news On one occasion, the breakdowns also happened in public. And it happened in the worst possible place. The day before Norway was to play in the semi-finals of the EC for teams in beach volleyball in Vienna last year, Karoline and Anders Mol were out eating sushi together at a restaurant. The plan was for Anders to return to the hotel where he and his volleyball partner Christian Sørum recharged, while Karoline was to sleep in an Airbnb and travel directly to the airport the next day to get to work in Norway. – I just wanted to stay in that bubble, but I had to go home. Like what then? A normal job that is not me. When I was about to say “have it” to him, I broke down, she says. She remembers it like it was yesterday. “This will be a crisis. I have to try to pull myself together. He’s going to play a match tomorrow, semi-final, I just have to toughen up and take this in the apartment afterwards,” she managed to think. But in front of the packed sushi restaurant, the breakdown started. She managed to get out into the street before it attacked her full force. – I was put out when it happened. I didn’t expect it to come so quickly. It was so strong, she completely panicked. I have never seen her in that condition, Anders Mol tells news today about the hitherto unknown drama. Karoline Olsen still has a bad conscience about what happened in Vienna last year. Photo: Ksenia Novikova / news As a top athlete, Mol is used to dealing with stressful situations and pressure, but he had not experienced this before. He sat down with her and made a plan. “I’ll come with you, that’s what you need. You need closeness. Safety. Don’t sleep in an airbnb alone,” he told her. For Anders Mol, it was an easy choice. The charge to the EC semi-final had to come second. He didn’t have the conscience to run away from Karoline to go back to the athletes’ hotel and focus on the sport. – She was completely out and hyperventilating. It was difficult to see his girlfriend in that situation there, he recalls. He informed his partner Christian Sørum that he would not return that evening. The coaches didn’t get to know anything. Norway won the semi-final the next day and later decided the final. But for Anders Mol, it was not a weekend he looks back on with pleasure. Karoline Olsen finds a lot of joy in her boyfriend Anders Mol. It helps her in a difficult time. Photo: Ksenia Novikova / news Karoline is still upset when she thinks back to what happened. She is ashamed because she couldn’t pull herself together. Because now it didn’t just go beyond her. Now the mental problems were dangerously close to directly affecting the partner’s career as well. – And I think that is still a crisis to this day, she says. Photo: Ksenia Novikova / news Anders Mol, who is both world champion and Olympic champion, has himself had a lifelong dream of being fully successful in sport. He has managed that. He thinks a lot about the fact that his girlfriend doesn’t get to experience the same thing. – It hurts to know that that dream has been taken away. Things are so unfair, he says. The dramatic event in Vienna was a wake-up call. Karoline Olsen realized that she had to take action, this could not continue like this. Now she has made a merciless choice; she has to leave Kristiansand. The couple have now moved into an apartment in Oslo, four hours away from everything that reminds her of Vipers and the life she had. – I’m escaping from the city now, but I have to escape. In Kristiansand, I am unable to progress and become a version of myself that I can live with, she says. Karoline Olsen eats instant noodles alone in a new apartment in Oslo. Now she is working with the psychologist to achieve her next big goal in life: Be equipped to be able to return to Kristiansand and deal with all the “triggers”. The hope is that sometime in the future she can see a Vipers game again. She wants to return to the joy of sport even if she herself cannot participate. But most importantly: She must find a new “meaning in life”. Something that is her. Vipers are visible everywhere in Kristiansand, which is why Karoline Olsen has now chosen to move. She thought for a long time about whether she should actually come forward with this story. She fears it can be perceived as whining, and that people don’t understand why she is in so much pain. What she is afraid of is what many would describe as a normal life. So why is she telling so openly now? – When I was at my lowest point, I had no stories to relate to, I felt alone, and that contributed to more shame. You always want to be the best version of yourself, and I think many young people feel that pressure. I want to be someone in society who can say “no, it didn’t work for me.” Here’s a story about someone who DID NOT make it”.
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Karoline’s crisis – Sport Langlesing
