Norway’s retired skiing queen marveled at the amount of practice of younger skiers.
Therese Johaug ended her colorful skiing career last spring as the supreme queen of the sport. Now in his newly published book, Johaug has been able to share his opinions more freely about the backstage of the skiing world, and even the Norwegian national team is not spared from criticism.
One of the turning points in Johaug’s career was the doping scandal in 2016, which kept the skier off the race tracks for 18 months. When he returned to the national team, he marveled at the changes within it.
Therese Johaug returned to the Norwegian national team in 2018 and marveled at the changed training culture. Matti Matikainen
Hiihäjätähti describes in his book that the new coaches Ole Iversen, Geir Rognin and later Ola Hattestad the training programs were softer than before. Johaug, who could train for a thousand hours during the year, thinks that the younger skiers were warned about the training methods of the prize winner.
Before the Beijing Olympics, Johaug says he trained 200-300 hours more than the other Norwegian national team skiers. The work paid off, as Johaug took gold medals from three individual trips.
Johaug’s criticism is not unwarranted, as the other Norwegian female skiers did not even reach the top ten in China on normal trips.
– In the first season after wearing the panna, I was surprised how much lighter the training program was compared to before. In the following years, this did not change, which led to a decrease in results, Johaugin tells the Norwegian VG in the interview.
– Then I realized what he was talking about. The work of the athletes, coaches and the union was not of sufficient quality.
Johaug cried when Egil Kristiansen coached the women’s national team. Kristiansen was head coach for 11 years and left his position in 2017.
Iversen, who also left the national team last spring and was criticized by Johaug, revealed to VG that some of the national team skiers were instructed to train with a lighter program compared to Johaug. The instruction was especially given to sprint skiers, for whom the training that developed Johaug’s fitness was not completely suitable.
Iversen also admits that national team activities did not manage to keep their level of requirements high enough.