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Athlete mindset for peak results
5th of May 2026 Article by Lotte Printz
An athletic career was a great springboard for one top job in the sector. This from ECJ’s Lotte Printz.
While writing this, dear readers, the world’s leading badminton players were in action at the All England Open Badminton Championships in Birmingham, England. An event where Danes have often excelled. And why is this relevant to this industry, you may well ask. Well, one can never know if professional athletes - in this case badminton players - transition into corporate roles. One ISS top executive did!
In a special series in Børsen (Danish business and financial daily newspaper) revealing which sports Danish business leaders throw themselves into, and why, CEO at ISS Kasper Fangel unfolds how badminton has influenced and even helped him in his executive career.
The series asks whether these executives do sports to clear their heads, to maintain their health or for the community spirit. Kasper Fangel used to play badminton professionally. He was part of the Danish national team in his youth, competed at the highest level and once - in 2004 - played in All England. Without lifting the trophy, though. He reached a career-high ranking of world No. 32 before he ended his badminton career in his early twenties to do a Master of Science degree in business economics and auditing at CBS (Copenhagen Business School) and subsequently pursue a business career.
Kasper Fangel has previously disclosed that being a professional athlete gave him more valuable experience than studying for a degree. Badminton taught him never to give up, a result of the long-term training necessary to achieve peak performance. To Børsen he said: “Sport is driven by the pursuit of constant improvement. Small adjustments, fine margins. We need to have the same approach in our business, constantly pursuing those areas where we can improve quality, efficiency and cooperation.”
“To permit constant development, you must devote energy and leverage resources to something useful. That’s exactly how I think business.”
Kasper Fangel recognises many aspects of his athletic career in his working life: Everything you do on court or in the C-Suite must be with the sole purpose of making you better – as an athlete or organisation. The social aspect and dedication are other similarities between badminton and business that the CEO finds important.
“When people are really enthusiastic and truly dedicated, they perform at a higher level. I’ve seen that in the world of sport, and the same goes for the business world,” Kasper Fangel stressed. Speaking to Børsen, the 46-year-old Danish national also gives credit to Denmark’s unique associational culture that offers a sense of community and is excellent at including recreational and professional athletes alike.
Once his own professional career is over and he can offer the total commitment he believes this culture deserves, he would like to become involved in some way. To give something back to the associational culture that ‘shaped’ him.
While Fangel acknowledges that he lacked the appropriate level to compete with the very best in his sport, he has taken his professional career to the very top. A career at ISS that took off with an unsolicited application to the then CEO who invited him for an interview the following day. He has more than 15 years of leadership experience at ISS, most recently as CFO from 2020 and then CEO since 2023.
And his achievements have been noticed elsewhere. At the end of February, LEO Pharma, one of Denmark’s global pharmaceutical companies, welcomed him as a board member and the new chair of the audit committee. It described him as having played a pivotal role in shaping strategy and delivering sustainable performance on a global scale.
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