Career
Anja Andersen is known for both her skills as an offensive player, her strong temper and courage to make dramatic scenes and daring tricks during a match. She was an important part of the renaissance in Danish handball during the 1990s. Her strong temper and impressive skills afforded everybody an opinion and after the first gold medal at the European championship in 1994 the national team affectionately earned the nickname "the iron ladies" and status of national sports heroes.
Although the national handball team of the 1990s had many profiles it is undisputed that Anja Andersen was the most prolific and controversial. Although nobody questioned her skills, her temper, causing numerous expulsions from high profile matches, was an issue of some debate. At the 1996 Olympics the coach, Ulrik Wilbek, briefly banned her from the team due to disputes of playing style and behavior on the floor. She has played 133 matches for the Danish national handball team for women and has scored 726 goals.
It was also Anja Andersen who introduced handball to true showmanship. Greatly influenced by basketball and notably the Harlem Globetrotters she invented a playing style aimed at the audience rather than the opposing team. After her retirement as an active player she organized a "dream team" of the best female handball players in 2000 and 2001 which played a selected Danish team. The "dream team" matches was a success but they stopped when Anja Andersen could no longer play actively herself.
Because of a heart defect, Andersen stopped her player career in 1999.
Read more about this topic: Anja Andersen
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“I restore myself when I’m alone. A career is born in public—talent in privacy.”
—Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962)
“I began my editorial career with the presidency of Mr. Adams, and my principal object was to render his administration all the assistance in my power. I flattered myself with the hope of accompanying him through [his] voyage, and of partaking in a trifling degree, of the glory of the enterprise; but he suddenly tacked about, and I could follow him no longer. I therefore waited for the first opportunity to haul down my sails.”
—William Cobbett (1762–1835)
“What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partner’s job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)