TRONDHEIM (VG) With a wedding and two surgeries, Sander Sagosen has experienced a roller-coaster summer of extraordinary dimensions. His entire career was at stake after the first surgery on his left ankle.

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– My toughest challenge in my handball career, Sander Sagosen told VG.

The sun was shining and Sagosen smiled a few hundred meters from his childhood home in Trondheim. The 26-year-old met VG near a fjord in Ranheim. A scar after 32 stitches marks the left ankle. He has ditched crutches and is well on his way to what could be a comeback in late fall. But it could be different.

– It could end fatally. The injury is career-threatening, says national team manual therapist Harald Markussen.

On June 5, it rained heavily in Hamburg. Sagosen lost his balance in the Bundesliga match for Kiel and also had his shirt ripped. Smoky left ankle. Two days later, the handball star had surgery in Germany.

Sagosen overcame his shock and married his Hanna Bredal Oftedal on crutches on June 25 home in Norway. Three days later came a big drop. He was called back to the operating table.

– Then you broke. I’ve been on crutches for a month and thought I had two more weeks. That’s difficult. But now it’s going well. Now I can work to recover, he said.

Sagosen himself didn’t know anything was wrong. A specialist in Oslo thought the pictures from Germany looked good. However, the national team’s manual therapist was not completely satisfied. Sagosen uses the word “sharp” about Harald Markussen, who has worked with handball children for several years. He connected Olympiatoppen orthopedists Lars Engebretsen and Marc Strauss.

– There are some demands on my ankle. Harald wanted a new picture and then they discovered that something was wrong. An MRI and CT revealed that the ankle was at fault, Sagosen himself said.

On July 4, he underwent ankle surgery under general anesthesia for the second time in 28 days.

– That’s very important. Mistakes can happen. It may never go well. We now believe that all prerequisites exist. It will just take a little longer, he said.

Harald Markussen confirmed Sagosen’s presentation of the injury. The ankle bone is in the process of growing fixed at the wrong angle at the ankle joint. It could end up with the entire ankle having to be broken if the injury is allowed to heal for another two weeks. The consequence could be that the Norwegian grom handball boy has a permanent problem in his ankle.

– I am grateful that we found out about the error, said Sander Sagosen.

– We had a bit of luck and a lot of skill through good advice from Strauss and Engebretsen, says a manual therapist who this summer also worked with Norwegian athletes in WC and EC.

Sagosen himself used the words “summer coaster”.

– I have lost matches and championships, but then life worked out. It’s different when you walk on crutches and need help with everything. Then you feel useless, he explained.

– You become depressed and feel sorry for yourself when you are in such a situation.

Harald Markussen said that new X-rays showed that Sagosen’s ankle had healed properly. It’s been seven weeks since the last operation. The strong full-back is now doing well on his left foot and looking forward to the fall with plenty of physical work.

– I think this means I will come back as a much stronger and better handball player. But I don’t agree with the conclusion. Now I start working with physics for 4-5-6 months. It’s only a matter of time before it reaches last season. I went from a broken rib to an injection in my heel to be able to play. There are a lot of trivia built. I barely practiced from March to the end. It was a huge boost from game to game, he said.

Now he is aiming for a comeback.

– By the end of November, I hope to be back playing. But then everything should work.

Harald Markussen, in collaboration with club Kiel, tracked Sagosen’s journey back onto the pitch. The “physio” is on a checklist that, step by step, will get him ready to play handball again.

On January 13, Norway opened the WC against North Macedonia in Krakow. Trønder himself said he would have to play handball in December to qualify for the championships in Sweden and Poland. Since Norway broke into the elite world, Sagosen has dominated very well: 357 goals in 62 games in the championship since 2016.

– There may be an assessment. But I’m still young and have a lot of championships left. I don’t want to rush to the toilet and halfway through, says Sagosen.

Harald Markussen believes the picture looks positive as long as the ankle has healed properly. According to the manual therapist, it will be fine again.

– It has gone really fast in the last few weeks. He has put in a lot of effort and we had a bit of luck. Sander was lying in front of where we thought he was after the last surgery, he said.