This is me: Louise Burgaard

THIS IS ME: Louise Burgaard

Today, wins are all about the pancakes.

Let me explain that to you. With Metz Handball, the club I have been playing for for almost five years, we do win a lot of games.

And it has become some kind of tradition for my husband, Andreas, to make some pancakes when I come home. To the point where my teammates have nicknamed him “Pancake Boy”.

You will not be surprised to learn that the pancakes he cooks are delicious and that they are getting better with every win.

Andreas is, to put it in a short sentence, the rock in my life.

I often say that he is the glue holding everything together and that I am the one tearing everything apart, and I’m really grateful that fate has put him in my way.

We started our relationship one month before I moved to Metz, in 2019, and we have never left each other since. He agreed to move to France with me quite early, and we got married last summer.

And frankly, I have never met anyone who has made me as happy as him.

But let’s talk about something else because I’ve said enough good things about him and I don’t want him to become too big-headed.

I’m just joking, of course.

If Andreas has been a massive part of my life lately, handball has been with me since I was five.

The earliest memories I have of myself were watching my mother play handball. Anna Lena, that’s her name, was a professional handball player and she played in the Danish first division.

But she is not the reason why I started handball at five.

Anything with a ball would be my favourite sport when I was young. I remember riding my bicycle back from school, stopping at the stadium and playing football for two hours. Then when the sky was dark, I would go inside, play handball for two hours, and then go home.

So it felt somehow natural for me to play both sports before I finally picked handball as a teenager.

I quickly became the next big thing in Denmark. Quite early, from the first national meetings in Denmark, the coaches thought I was a good player, someone who would work hard and whose talent was very promising.

And then I found myself on the handball motorway. National team, big clubs, playing the Olympics at 19 in London, everything came as fast as lightning. Over a short period of time, I achieved things that many players never even dreamt about in a lifetime.

I was always thinking about getting better, better and better, without actually taking a step back and enjoying it. I did not go to many parties, I was also pursuing studies at the same time, trying to get the best grades.

I was, basically, doing many things at a time, and trying to be the best in every field, without listening to my body and my mind enough.

I had such high expectations for myself that I wanted to be the best player in the world every day. But such a progression could not go exponentially forever.

Sure, my family and my friends were telling me that what I was achieving was already great, but I was not listening. I was just, I think, not able to step down and take a break.

And then it broke down. When you are an athlete, you are constantly walking a thin line, and you are trying to keep the right balance.

I was so exhausted mentally, training myself to the point where I would not enjoy it that, in 2016, everything crumbled.

I had to take a step away from the courts for a few months. I needed to recharge my batteries, I needed just my brain to rest.

Was it burnout? Was it stress? Who cares?

I don’t remember much about that period and, to be frank, I don’t want to look too much into it or be remembered as the player who did suffer from whatever you call it.

Yes, I got out of it, thanks to my family, my friends and my club then, Midtjylland.

And I do like to think I am a much more balanced person now than I used to be.

Not everything is so black or white anymore. Sure, as you grow up, you cut some of the raw edges off. I have learned patience but I also managed to keep my values and to have a little bit more love for myself.

I did integrate the fact that you can’t be your best self every day and that this can even be valuable in the long term. You can have bad days, but for athletes, and in society even, it is rare for it to be accepted.

I will never be the stereotype of the athlete, the one that is always strong and never has failures.

I will never be Nikola Karabatic, Ivano Balic, Anja Andersen and Katrine Fruelund at the same time, as I once thought I could.

But in the end, I will be myself, and that’s the most important thing.

It is ok to show vulnerability.

It is ok to have a bad day, it is ok to have doubts.

Defeats are not ok, though.

If you wrote a This is Me episode with him, Andreas would tell you how horrible I can be after losing a match!

But I still wanted, in a way, to pass on some of my experiences to other athletes, good or bad. I wanted to inspire others, in a good way.

And if I have never been too good at taking pictures, Instagram was the way for me to do it.

I started doing a podcast, in which I spoke to other athletes and personalities in sports about how they became successful. There are a thousand ways to reach success, and I wanted to express them in this podcast.

Then I promoted it on my own Instagram, and that was it. There was no goal set, no minimum followers to reach. I wanted to share my experiences with the world, as simple as that.

And even though I closed that chapter eighteen months ago, I still get good feedback. I got some from athletes, but also from people that had no connection to handball.

It’s actually strange that people would still listen to it now, but I’m quite proud of how it turned out.

It took me some years, but pride is actually the feeling I get when I look back on my career, even though I will probably do it more by the time I am 40 and retired.

As you can see, there were a lot of pages in the Louise Burgaard book, and the next chapter is just about to open, as I will be moving back to Denmark next summer.

I will have spent five years in France next summer and, as I often say, five years in handball is the equivalent of ten for anyone else.

In terms of experiences and emotions, a career in sports equals someone else’s life, and I feel like it is time for me to move back home.

I never thought that I would be inspired so much coming here and my time in Metz has really blown my expectations.

The fans here are the most amazing ones I’ve ever met, they supported me right from when I arrived, and some of the memories I have from this club will remain forever.

I am definitely not the same person as I was when I moved away from Denmark. After all that happened to me when I was younger, I feel like I am now in the right place, surrounded by the right people.

But it’s time to go home to Denmark now. I hope we can finally win the EHF Champions League that we have been chasing for four seasons now before I leave, as that would be the perfect gift, but there’s still a long way to go.

Things will be different there compared to how they are now, but some things will stay the same.

And don’t worry about me. I will still get pancakes after each win.

Louise Vinter Burgaard
January 2024

All the family and youth team photos are from Louise Burgaard's personal archive