Isabelle Gulldén
At the World Championship in 2015 I was writing a story featuring a number of players, where I was mapping the path from being a child dreaming of being a professional handball player through to managing the bumps in a successful career. I asked each of them about different stages in their careers — Tunisian Mouna Chebbah about her childhood dream of playing in Europe and then actually doing it; Montenegrin Katarina Bulatovic about how hard she worked to develop her killer shot; Swedish Isabelle Gulldén about making it into the national team for the first time and becoming a key player; and Polish Kinga Achruk about the challenges of tournaments.
My only chance to interview Gulldén was right after they lost the Last 16 game against Denmark. I asked her about coming back from big disappointments as well as small ones, like missing being named in the national team versus making a mistake in a match. It was what she said about mistakes in games that I really held onto and applied in my daily life.
The original quote is sadly lost – blame almost a decade of laptop changes and website updates — but it was basically that ‘the best players are the ones who recover from their mistakes the fastest’. I’ve thought of that advice from Gulldén many times since that moment — whenever I have made a mistake, I’ve tried to make it a habit to recover and learn from it as soon as possible. The faster the better.
Mayssa Pessoa
I was covering the Women’s Junior World Championship in 2018 when I noticed Chile goalkeeper Madeleine Cortez leave the court looking very disheartened, as her team were losing and she had been facing a lot of fast breaks. I played one World Championship for Australia, and I know how difficult it was for our goalkeepers as we lost by clear margins.
I wanted to talk to Cortez to let her know she wasn’t alone — to remind her that way more players in the world are working hard in a developing team than those who experience standing on top of a podium. Then I thought of another South American goalkeeper I had just met, at the Women’s EHF FINAL4 2018, whose words would have more weight: Mayssa Pessoa. So, I asked Pessoa if she wouldn’t mind sending some words of encouragement for Cortez.
Pessoa was really sick at the time, so it was a very nice effort for her to send this encouraging video speaking in a croaky recovering-from-a-cold voice. Pessoa spoke to Cortez for several minutes about how she knows it’s hard and what matters is that she does her best and that the team are all in it together. I showed Cortez the video and, after that, I saw so many times in games where her head was about to drop but she must have thought of Pessoa’s advice, because then she would visibly find her strength again.
Pessoa helped me see just how powerful it is when we support each other and how much the right person, very often an unexpected person, offering encouragement can make an enormous difference.
Nora Mørk
Some years ago, Nora Mørk was hacked and personal photos of her were shared online. It was a shocking crime and the way Mørk handled it was so important in helping women feel as though we have agency when it comes to our bodies. It may seem obvious that we should, but the society we live in has changed a lot in recent years to reach the understanding we have now — I am sure most adult women grew up with the idea that we need to be cautious in order to protect ourselves and there was no other option.
But there is another option — for us to live however we want and the people who would perpetrate any kind of cybercrime or physical or sexual harassment or worse to be the ones who are punished for their transgressions.
In the early days of such cybercrimes, I recall some Hollywood celebrity photo hacks where the actresses lost sponsorships or jobs because someone stole their photos. The women were punished for being victims of a crime.
The understanding of such incidents as the crimes they are had to evolve, and now we can thank people like Mørk for making the world realise that someone taking advantage of a woman in any way is nothing for the woman to be ashamed of. It is the perpetrators who must be ashamed. She did nothing wrong in enjoying her life, and we all should feel free to do that without feeling like we are asking for harassment or worse.