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Gällivare November 2019.
Frida Karlsson had won the Swedish premiere. Large wet snowflakes landed on the hood of the down jacket as Frida commented on the news about the Norwegian Ingvild Flugstad Østberg. The “fly” had been banned from competing after failing the Norwegian association’s health tests.
– I think everyone is on the border, said Frida.
– It takes hard training to develop and you have to stretch a bit at that limit to see what you can do. You always want to do your best to develop yourself as much as possible.
Frida Karlsson said about the tests she and the other riders do:
– We check body composition, bone density and more. It is the doctors who know what tests to do. I mark so everything looks good, then I can move on.
– You have to be smart and wise and have people around to see when to slow it down.
I see in the text that I asked:
Do you always listen then?
– Yes, I surround myself with people I trust one hundred percent.
About someone there and then She hit Frida on the shoulder and said that she herself would receive the same competition ban just over two weeks later, so she had never thought about it.
– I was pretty blind by myself, says Frida Karlsson a year later.
– I kept driving and trained hard. It was inside my bubble and I received a surprise message when it arrived.
How did you get the message?
– It was after a health check we did. When I was going through what he usually does with the then national team doctor (Magnus Oscarsson), I got the message.
Frida Karlsson, then 20 existence was turned upside down.
Year after year he had trained harder and harder and the development curve only pointed upward. That same year, he had his breakthrough with three medals in his senior WC debut.
Now everything would be put on hold. O. It seems that some kind of active rest began.
Last season was a roller coaster for Frida Karlsson. The first winter competition awaits you on Friday, in Bruksvallarna.
Photo: Erik Mårtensson / TT
When shock and disappointment and the confusion subsided, Frida Karlsson began working toward new goals. First it was about getting the body to recover, secondly about being able to compete again. It was more than two months before he was on the starting line again.
– When I grabbed it and thought that now I will be strong and come back as fast as possible, but I will still do it thoroughly, then it was fun. When you see the development, it shoots you. I knew it would take time before I could start racing again, but I felt like I was there. I felt it was stronger than before suspension, purely in terms of skiing.
– So I got the finishing touch at the end. It was the result of the work I did.
For a skier it’s a bigger Olympic gold, then a World Cup title. Third comes a victory in Holmenkollen. This is where Frida Karlsson put her finishing touches.
The three-mile victory was proof that he could emerge from a deep depression. He also showed that he could fall, get up and take a distance of more than a minute to Therese Johaug. Norwegian was not unbeatable. Not even at home.
– It was a special race, remembers Frida. When we switched skis and Ebba (Andersson) and I started to move away from each other, the feeling was first and foremost “We are on the podium, now we drive, now we will keep the others behind us.”
– Later, towards the end, we received reports ahead and triggered an adrenaline out of the ordinary. It was like you didn’t feel any tiredness at all.
– In the end, I felt unstoppable. When I also started to see Therese in front of me, I began to understand that this is mine too.
Frida Karlsson crosses the finish line after catching up and overtaking Therese Johaug during the three miles at Holmenkollen.
Photo: Mathias Bergeld / Bildbyrån
After that race Ski season closed. It will now reopen with the classic race on Friday at Bruksvallarna. The Norwegian season also starts this weekend, but Ingvild Flugstad Østberg is absent, a new competition ban has been imposed.
For Frida Karlsson, a groin has been overloaded and altered during loading. He still hopes to get started. As before, it is important to know where the border is going.
– I take many lessons from last season, says Frida Karlsson. Now I have a greater sense of security in the team around me. Perhaps that was necessary to obtain this knowledge that I have acquired.
According to “Pliggen” Andersson is back as a doctor for the national ski team. You have the medical responsibility of cyclists.
– We work very intensively with these health checks. It’s an important part of our job, especially when it comes to our girls, for us to see if things start to go in the wrong direction, Andersson says.
Have the controls been tightened after what happened to Frida Karlsson?
– I would not say that they have been sharpened, but new knowledge is coming. The health of women linked to elite sports is a subject that is intensely debated. We try to find new tools and above all we learn to interpret the results we obtain.
Interpretation of the test is difficult for sports doctors. A value that shows that an ordinary Svensson needs to pause, most things can be ordinary values for an elite athlete Karlsson.
When should something be considered pathologically deviant for an elite athlete working in an industry that is not healthy?
This is what Per Andersson thinks.
And Frida Karlsson, was put to the test on the way back.
– I had to do a very different workout while I was away. Now I feel a sense of security that even if you have a plan, you don’t have to fully follow it to take action. That was a lesson in that. I didn’t train much when I was away and yet I managed to improve than I was before. It is something very exciting that I take with me.
Frida Karlsson believes that there is something positive in what happened to him. More people are trying to keep track of the body’s alarm system.
– Take this with the fact that right now there are a lot of back problems when skiing. It should be noted what challenges all athletes have. A great thing is this with balance. You have to train harder and harder to take steps, but then you must have the knowledge to be able to maintain the required balance under an increased load.
It also sounds like the lesson Frida learned when she was forced to take a day, one session at a time, becomes important now during skier pandemic season.
– It will be important to see – what can I do here and now? You have to focus your energy on what you can influence, says Frida Karlsson of uncertainty.
– It’s like it’s questionable outside, but I choose not to put energy into it, but to focus on what I can do. The same goes for the pandemic for us. I am sure that in the national team we have people who work day by day with this. So I trust you will make the best decisions for us in this situation.
