Photo: Bildbyrån
It has already been six years since the Olympic hero from 2010, Marcus Hellner, ended his skiing career.
Now life is about other things. Among other things, he did something really impressive last weekend.
– It was very fun, I must say. But also difficult, of course, he tells NSD.
He was the king of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. Marcus Hellner38, went home from Canada with two gold medals and was just a second away from a bronze in the 15km freestyle. The following year he won WC gold in the sprint in Holmenkollen. For his efforts, he was awarded the award “Male Athlete of the Year” in both 2011 and 2012 at the Sports Gala.
Ran the Berlin Marathon
Six years after he retired as an elite athlete, Hellner was recently back in competition. This summer it was the Lumire race (Luleå stadsmara), 21 km, that applied. He ran that in 1:19.45 and had a bloody tooth. Last Sunday it was time to double the distance. Together with the former sprint star Theodore Peterson36, and two friends from Gällivare, he went to Berlin to run the marathon.
– It was very fun, I must say. But also hard, of course. I’ve never run a marathon before so it was an experience and fun to try. It is clear that it adds a little more flavor. You need to move and have competitions to get started training these days, says Marcus Hellner to NSD.
When the Berlin Marathon celebrated its 50th anniversary, 50,000 runners registered. He finished in 2:45.15, which is of course an impressive time! Hellner, on the other hand, maintains that he does not train very much anymore, now that he is not an elite athlete.
READ MORE: The hero Marcus Hellner disappeared completely into the radio shadow – now he talks about his new life: “I regret nothing”
– I ran together with Teodor Peterson and we had a plan. He ran great and finished in 2.37, so he made a damn good time, and he hadn’t trained very much either. I tried to hook him, but when you haven’t run this before you don’t know what you can handle, so I went a little too hard with hindsight. But you always want to test, you have to do that, he says.
Marcus Hellner does now
After his skiing career, Hellner moved up to Gällivare and trained as a helicopter pilot, because a friend who was interested told him about it. He himself had no interest initially, but it grew on him.
He has also done some work with the local ski high school that trains at the so-called “Hellner arena” in Gällivare. In addition, he has developed his own clothing brand called “Hellner”. The clothes are mainly aimed at skiers and fitness athletes.
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– There is a part of my clothing brand that I am working on. I develop clothes and market them together with Outnorth. Then I work part-time as a pilot with Fiskflyg, so I fly a few weeks in the summer and autumn. My children are eight and ten now, so I try to spend a lot of time with them when I’m at home, he tells NSD.
Exciting to see what this legendary skiing icon is doing these days. It was actually a mix of many interesting things, shall we say.
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