Frida Karlsson and Maja Dahlqvist have left the Swedish national ski team.
Now the Norwegian ski icon Martin Johnsrud Sundby sends a sharp warning.
– It’s scary, he says.
The development is the same in Norway as it has been in Sweden recently. More and more ski stars choose to drop out of the national ski teams and their training groups to instead invest in their own approach, with their own coaches.
The warning after the departure
In recent weeks, Linn Svahn, Frida Karlsson and Maja Dahlqvist – three of Sweden’s biggest stars – have chosen to make the decision, and in Norway the situation is the same. Emil Iversen and Johannes Hösflot Kläbo have their own coaches, and Therese Johaug has long had her own coaches.
Martin Johnsrud Sundby, former world champion and a Norwegian ski icon, says that the development is “scary”.
– The Swedes say well between the lines that the national team structure is not good enough for the development they want. It’s scary, he tells VG.
“I noticed a difference”
He also highlights Didrik Tönseth, the Norwegian who is back in the Norwegian national team after being outside it for a year. Now that he is back, however, he does it with a team of coaches around him – which he pays out of his own pocket.
– He probably noticed how important it is with sporting development when he was outside. That’s what matters and nothing else. That says something when he pays out of his own pocket, he says.
Sundby believes that the development within the national team has been that there is an increasing focus on commercial things, more than just the sporting development.
– There were few things in the national team that would develop the skier. I noticed a big change during my last years, the management devoted more to commercial processes than training and results.
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