The dream of Europe turned into a complete utopia for Vipers. And ended in a megalomaniac madness that can destroy the future of many of the world’s best handball women. No matter what emerges from desperate rescue operations from scorned former board members, the story of Vipers’ fall will appear as one of Norwegian sports’ great horror stories – ever. And will probably end up as textbook material in the subject of irresponsible club management. In front of the shop stewards, in front of the administrative staff in the club, in front of the players. And, for that matter, other clubs, who would have liked to have several of the stars on their teams. If only they could afford it. The Vipers have managed to give the impression that they have. The result is three unique Champions League triumphs in a row between 2021 and 2023. Now, in all likelihood, there will be no more. If the need chairman Peter Gitmark estimated at NOK 25 million is true, “irresponsible” is not sufficient anyway. It is far beyond obscene. The amount came as a huge shock, obviously also to the players. Minute-by-minute handball accident Since then, it has felt as if the sports nation has sat and followed the accident to the flagship Sørlandet minute-by-minute. Sometimes with hope of rescue. But underneath it all, awareness has awakened that the ship has long since taken in too much water to be salvageable. In the middle of it all, the new helmsman has stood firm in the self-proclaimed hurricane. Handball has had its very own Espen Rostrup Nakstad this past week. BANKRUPTCY: After Sunday’s board meeting, Peter Gitmark met the press and told them that the club was bankrupt. Photo: Tor Erik Schrøder / NTB The one who conveys the serious message to the nation at all hours of the day and makes us all understand that this is painful and difficult, but nevertheless necessary. Peter Gitmark, who lost the battle to become the Conservative Party’s mayoral candidate in Kristiansand two years ago, was elected in March and is therefore too new as chairman to be held accountable – and to be expected to contribute anything other than fading hope in the battle against the economic waves of the century. Then you have some days where you are invulnerable. Top of the tearful delivery of the heavy bankruptcy message late on a Sunday evening, after the board has said no to further operations. This was an expression of a responsibility previous directors of the club have obviously lacked. The board considered that the operation cannot continue for very long anyway. Then it’s time to call it quits. But here, too, this was nowhere near being a full stop. SAD MOOD: Vipers lost to Storhamar after the grim financial situation became known last week. Photo: Javad Parsa / NTB Deadline on deadline on deadline Former board member and long-time investor Morten Jørgensen was quick to respond and called the decision “Norway’s most unnecessary demand for bankruptcy”. Nothing less. From one of those who has also been responsible for driving the costs so far into the sky, especially when it comes to salaries, in recent years that the club has ended up in the situation they are now in. From 2020 to 2023 the club more than doubled its salary costs, from just over NOK 13 million to almost NOK 29 million. In three years. And when it had become Monday, suddenly the threat of convening an extraordinary annual meeting to throw out the board was probably as important to chairman Gitmark as what he presented half a day earlier as an absolute decision. New deadlines resurfaced. With more than one solution option on the table. Including the extraordinary general meeting that is now moving towards. Which is not a rescue in itself. But that gives the club yet another deadline. And with each such deadline that appears, confidence in the seriousness of the process decreases. And finally leads to questions about the chairman’s real motives for dramatizing the situation as he has done. Gitmark sat in the Storting for 12 years from 2001 and symbolically ended his career as an elected representative with an auction of some of the assets, or “small things” in Fædrelandsvennen’s presentation, from the Storting period. Now this can be the case in Vipers too. If this ends in bankruptcy, the players are released and must find new clubs, in the middle of an ongoing season. A dream for sales-hungry agents. A nightmare for players who have established themselves in Kristiansand to play on perhaps the world’s best club team in handball. When dreams become utopia Handball club Vipers’ dream was to surpass everything that anyone had done in this country. They managed to do that in the end. But not in the way they once dreamed of. VICTORY: Amidst the chaos, Vipers beat Buducnost in this weekend’s Champions League match. Here Marta Tomac and Katrine Lunde hug. Photo: Tor Erik Schrøder / Tor Erik Schrøder / NTB With this, Kristiansand’s own pride continues something that more and more appears as a glaring tradition in Norwegian handball, and especially on the women’s side. Their predecessor as Norway’s dominant club team was Larvik Handball Club. They won everything there was to win in Norway between 1999 and 2017, when they won 17 out of 18 league championships. In 2011, they also became the first Norwegian club to win the Mesterligaen. When they were eventually defeated in the series, by a single point by the Vipers in 2018, it was the start of a steep decline. Just one year later, Larvik lost its license and was moved down a division. Now, ironically, they could be on their way to reclaiming the throne, should the Vipers actually disappear. And carry on the aforementioned legacy. Which means that one may soon have to ask the question whether the handball nation Norway is simply too small to stand as big as it has been done in the aforementioned clubs. In the bushes at Bækkelaget The very best example – and in a special class the biggest public drama – took place in the time before Larvik took over. The crazy investment in the Bækkelaget in Oslo at the end of the 1990s cannot be called anything other than the gimmick of the times in Norwegian handball. The club vacuumed up the market for world stars, including the Danish rebel and virtuoso Anja Andersen, and for a short period drew thousands to completely ordinary league matches in Norway. It couldn’t last. Neither financially nor humanly, as it turned out. The friction between the stars and for that matter coach Frode Kyvåg eventually played out in full public view and ended in total chaos, where the aforementioned Danish star left the club literally on the day. HANDBALL DRAMA: Anja Andersen finally left the press conference when she told that she was going to leave the Bækkelaget in 1997. Coach Frode Kyvåg stayed on. Photo: NTB news’s then very committed reporters Tord Berthinussen and Espen Graff literally reported from the bushes outside Anja Andersen’s house at Bækkelaget and described the whole thing in the same evening’s Dagsrevyen with great pathos as “the biggest drama in Norwegian sports history”. Now the drama has finally got a worthy competitor for the title from handball’s own ranks. In a club that will not give up the dream of Europe either. And where a deadline is never just a deadline. Published 21.10.2024, at 13.56 Updated 21.10.2024, at 14.37
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