This is me: Nikola Karabatic

THIS IS ME: NIKOLA KARABATIC

If you are a handball fan, you probably have heard of my name. 

While I am, as you can imagine, really proud of that, I also always took fame with caution. 

Sure, from a very young age, I had this ambition to take my sport as high as possible, to make handball as big as it could possibly be. I also wanted to wave the Karabatic flag high in the sky in honour of my dad, for him to be proud of me.

But I also very quickly found out that everyone could make you king one day, and you could be down in the gutter the following morning.

So I really tried to take all that came to me throughout my career with a step back and a wry smile. It was important for my sport to get bigger that I would be in the spotlight, but in the meantime, I really tried not to take that for granted.

Maybe all of that comes from my education. I was born in the former Yugoslavia from Branko, my dad, and Lala, my mum. Her real name is Radmila, but everyone calls her Lala, so you can as well.

My dad was a handball goalkeeper, and he moved from what is now Serbia to France in 1984, when I was just a few months old. For four years, I stayed in Nis with my mum. 

When I was younger, my dad was my hero. He was strong, he was loving, he was careful, and he was brave enough to move to France in his thirties while he could have stayed in his home country and had a good life.

And that, to younger me, was something incredible. My dad was driven by a will to make a better life for the ones around that was completely unmatched.

He was the strong person in the family, the one around whom everything would revolve. But now that I am an adult, and moreover, a father of two, I realise how big the dedication of my mum was.

She was never really given the credit that she deserved, so I have to underline how important she was both to my father and also to me and Luka, my younger brother.

In Serbia, she graduated as a medical doctor, and she was promised a great future. She was one the best of her generation in the country, and had she stayed, she would probably have been head of some ward in a hospital.

But no, she decided to put herself to the side and to move to France in 1988 to follow my dad, as she was pregnant with Luka, my little brother.

Things were hard for her at first. Her degree could not give her the right to be a doctor in France, so she took caregiver jobs to take some money home. And I know how hard it must have been for her to start from scratch in a country she did not know, when you could have had a dream life in your native country.

I am pretty certain that my mental strength, that will never to give up, came more from my mum than from my dad. She has been a fighter all her life, she was always in the shadow but still, she kept fighting the whole time.

But both my dad and my mum gave me a proper Balkan education. There might be some misconception about the whole concept, but yes, they did tell me they loved me. A lot.

Balkan people are often seen as being stiff-upper-lip people, but my parents were not. They were to show their feelings, to tell me they loved me and they were proud of me, and my mum still says it to me every single day.

It was written, somewhere, that I had to start handball. I would watch my dad train and play and of course, I gave handball a try. But it was not more than a game until my dad started to train me in Frontignan when I was eight.

A lot of early memories of handball are linked with Frontignan, a small city on the south coast of France. My dad had retired from playing, but he was training now. And I guess he saw that handball was kind of easy for me, as he forced me to do a lot of things in order for me to keep getting better and better.

Only playing with my left hand, not having the right to score within a game, he tried everything. Sure, I got frustrated at times, but in the meantime, I later saw that he only did all of the things for my own good.

My dad aimed for the stars for me, no matter whether it meant playing handball at a professional level or not. And one of the ways for me to make him proud was to try to touch them for him.

It might have been written somewhere that handball was the path I would pursue, but it was not until when I was about 10 that being a professional really seemed like something I wanted to achieve. 

My dad did not push me to take on handball as a job. It was my passion, a goal for my life, and what he did was to take my hand and to help me out on the journey. Just like, I guess, any dad would do for his son.

And off I went; I moved to Montpellier, signed my first professional contract and won my first EHF Champions League. That was like a dream come true back then, even if, on that day, I did not really realise how hard it would be to win another one.

It’s around that point, in 2004, that I met Noka Serdarusic. I always say that he was a second dad, but he really was. When I moved to Kiel, in 2005, my family stayed in France. My parents were still working, Luka was still living in Montpellier, not far from home, so it was the first time being away from my family.

And Noka took me under his wings. I would sometimes eat at his house with his wife, he would drive me through the hurdles of life, both off and on the court. I took a step, or maybe three, thanks to him. 

I was so happy to meet him again in Paris, it felt like we were all reunited in the same place. And of course I am still in contact with him, now that he has retired in the country.

I won the Champions League with Noka, as I did with Montpellier and with Barcelona a few years later.

It is always a bit hard for me to pick my favourite of all, as they are all very different. But the answers often ends up the same. The one we won with Barça in 2015 was that extra bit special. 

I knew, before the EHF FINAL4 started, that I would be moving to PSG the season after, and I put myself under a lot of pressure to finish my Barça stay on a high. I don’t think I put myself under so much pressure in the rest of my career.

And we managed to do it, I even was elected MVP of the EHF FINAL4. It meant a lot to help Xavi Pascual win it, and to finish my stay there with that trophy in the end.

Speaking again of Noka, it goes without saying that he was there when my dad passed away in 2011. That was a shock. Even if we could sense that something bad might happen at some point, losing your dad so young is still something that you can never prepare yourself for.

From then on, I put myself under responsibility. I was the older son, I had to take care of my family and follow his path. I wanted him to be proud of me, but I also wanted my mum to be taken care of.

Of course, that was quite a huge pressure, as I was only 27 back then. But I did not think twice about it. 

That was about the point in my life where Geraldine stepped in. I met her when my former teammate Mickael Robin hosted a party in his house, and it was love at first sight. 

It knew it was here. There are some feelings that one can not explain, and it was one of them.

I was happy she was able to see my dad before he went, and I am just as happy that she gets along fine with my family. Together with Luka’s family and my mum, we form this kind of awesome happy family that I am super happy about.

Geraldine is a really empathetic person, and she taught me to open myself more to others. She made me question myself a lot about what I do and what I am, even more since we have had two wonderful kids.

I can not list the things that she has brought me, as there are too many, but I sure am a different — and hopefully better — person since I met her. She is also one of the people who never get the credit they deserve, so I give it to her here.

Speaking of kids, my life has taken a completely different turn since Alek and Nora arrived. 

As a young player, you need the adrenalin and you need to be focused in order to fuel yourself, to put your career on the right track. But as you grow older, I find it important to open your eyes and your mind to what is going on around you.

Having children definitely did that to me. I lifted my eyes after looking at the road for a long time, and it gave me clarity as well. 

Being able to share the last moments of my career with them, having them cheering in the stands and taking them on the court when we won the EHF EURO in 2024, for example, was as important for me as winning the trophy by itself. 

I hope they will keep the memories as I did, because they are wonderful ones.

People often ask me if I feel like I missed out on things while being as devoted to handball as I am. No, I never felt like it was a sacrifice.

Sure, there are weddings and birthdays that I would have liked to attend and that I missed because I had a game to play, but in the meantime, I celebrated all these things differently, and sometimes a few days late.

But while saying that, going to ski with them this winter for the first time was just magical. Not playing anymore, not having too many physical problems and being able to enjoy those simple things with them, is really fantastic.

Yes, I do take the kids to school in the morning, yes, I attend their trainings and their games just as any normal father would.

The story of my life would not be complete without waving hi to Luka, my younger brother. People might have thought that he started handball at a high-level just because he was my brother, but that was completely wrong, and he proved it with his career.

To think that he could have been playing tennis at such a high-level as well gives you a hint on how talented this guy is.

Having him by my side made things even more intense, especially since we share this amazing relationship. It is one of the things that we never imagined when we were younger.

All these titles are incredible by themselves, but imagine sharing these moments with your brother, your mother, your children, your lifelong partner. That’s something that you can only dream of, and still…

It is happening.

Now that it is over, I am enjoying my after life even more since I was able to plan the end of my career. Finishing after the Olympics in Paris was what I planned, and the fact that I could stick to the plan meant that I don’t feel like I miss handball.

I still follow it, I still love it, but I don’t want to go out there again. It’s great to be able to stop when you want to, and I had prepared for the end well early enough that the end was not a shock.

It was, on the contrary, quite a leap into the unknown. When you have played handball for so long, done so many things and spent so many hours training and playing, there is always a risk that you end up facing a blank page.

But I have enjoyed every opportunity I was given since last summer. I went to the US to commentate pn the NFL Superbowl with beIN Sports, which was really a dream come true. I have given conferences and advice on management. I have taken the time to see friends and spend time with my loved ones.

My "after career" is exactly as I imagined it before, maybe even better. I really am having the time of my life, again.

Nikola Karabatic
June 2025

Photos © main: kolektiff; in-text: kolektiff; Laurène Valroff; Getty Images 2023; galleries: as indicated