Kristoffer Bergström before the Tour de Ski
For next season, Elfsborg should ignore the Allsvenskan and aim to be good in individual matches.
Does that sound insane?
Don’t tell me, tell the skiers.
Three years ago, Diggins and Stupak stood in the way of Ebba Andersson in the World Cup. Last year, it was Neprjajeva and Diggins who prevented her from taking Swedish skiing’s first overall victory on the women’s side.
This winter, the 26-year-old’s worst opponents are Stefan Thomson and Anders Byström. In their roles as women’s coach and national team manager, they are responsible for Ebba Andersson being kicked out of two out of three sprints so far.
– It will be these seven riders instead. It shows how tough the competition is in the team, Thomson said after beating her in the opener.
Lost 157 points there
A statement that made me growl and gape at the short-sightedness. It may happen that seven Swedish women were sharper in the pre-season, but the competition they compete in is called the World Cup and aims to finish as high as possible in a table. It is achieved through successful and regular competition, not by resting in the woolen slippers while the competition blows away.
Ebba Andersson comes to the Tour de ski 167 points behind cup leader Jessie Diggins. It is an accessible but unnecessarily large gap, which can be directly traced to the pokes.
full screen Anders Byström and Stefan Thomson. Photo: Petter Arvidson / Bildbyrån
In the Ruka sprint the American picked up 72 points and in Trondheim a couple of weeks later 85, i.e. a total of 157 sticks.
Ebba Andersson would probably not have been as successful if she had been taken out, because Diggins is a better sprinter. But the Swede has this year trained specially in the speed discipline and came in her first sprint of the season in 14th place, which the generous points ladder rewarded with 54 points.
It’s shameful
Had Ebba Andersson been allowed to participate and run equally well in the other two sprints, she would have an extra 108 points now and would have been right on Diggins’ heels.
You can think. But that is apparently wrong.
– It’s tough in the sprint. We all know that and Ebba is not enough, said Thomson.
Gläfs. Bitter.
If you recognize a basic tone in this text, it is because I repeated the same opinion in several columns. It is shameful that Swedish skiing has tried to win the World Cup on the women’s side for half a century without success.
Winter after winter new explanations come. We were unlucky with illness or prioritized the championship or just weren’t enough this time. It doesn’t surprise me if there are excuses this time too, maybe something about Ebba being tired or snotty this morning, something about other sprinters not being broken, but I don’t buy it.
You don’t care
In the championship- and Russian-free season 23/24, the national ski team’s only reasonable goal should be to win the overall cups. The vision should guide everything from statements, marketing, training plans and team selection: follow us – because finally we will win!
But you don’t want to. You don’t care. Seven was better on that November day in Finland and right must be right and imagine how much fun it was for Johanna Hagström and Maja Dahlqvist.
No football or hockey team could have reasoned like the national ski team. Nowhere else in elite sport can one so easily refrain from or be sidelined from ordinary activities.
It could still happen that Sweden’s top cross-country skier wins the overall, that she reaches the summit of Alpe Cermi first and advances past Rosie Brennan, Diggins and Emma Ribom in the charts. That would be fun.
But in that case, it is not thanks to the national team’s decisions, but in spite of them.
2023-12-31 05:37:29
#BERGSTRÖM #growl #gape #treated
