The upcoming weekend will be an intense battle in Gällivare for World Cup spots leading up to the premiere in Ruka. However, one skier has already secured her place in the World Cup until Christmas: “That allows me to maintain the training load longer into the season,” says the 25-year-old Swedish.

The Swedish World Cup skier Moa Lundgren can look back on a quite eventful last season. She missed the beginning of the season due to a stomach surgery, and for the first three weeks after the operation, she couldn’t use her abdominal muscles at all:

Moa Lundgren can look back on a quite eventful last season. She missed the beginning of the season due to a stomach surgery, and for the first three weeks after the operation, she couldn’t use her abdominal muscles at all:

“It was an incredibly different situation. I couldn’t even lift a milk box, and during that time, I had to roll out of bed,” says Lundgren, who made her competition debut at the Scandinavian Cup in Östersund in mid-December.

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“Considering the circumstances leading into the season, I skied much better than I had dared to hope for. But the time to qualify for the World Championships was too short,” says Lundgren, who secured the overall victory in the Scandinavian Cup the first weekend of March through a win in the sprint and seventh places in both distance races in Madona, Latvia.

This means that she is now, as the only Swedish skier, already confirmed for all World Cup events until Christmas (on the men’s side, Harald Østberg Amundsen won last winter’s overall cup and is also confirmed for the World Cup until Christmas).

“It’s a great comfort heading into the premiere in Gällivare. It means that I can both maintain the training load longer into the season and that I don’t have to peak for the races in Gällivare,” says Lundgren to Langd.se.

Do you already have specific races that you look forward to until Christmas?

“It will be fun to test the World Championship tracks in Trondheim (which will host the 2025 World Championships), but of course, the races in Östersund. I live 200 meters from the ski stadium. Last year, I competed in the Scandinavian Cup there, now it’s the World Cup. It’s going to be so amazing,” says Lundgren, who is one of the skiers who has chosen to focus a significantly larger portion of the dryland season’s training at high altitude.

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It’s something she has had significant challenges with before:

“I hadn’t been on a high-altitude camp since 2021. Then there were three altitude camps, and on the last of these, I was ‘no longer usable.’ Now, I have a completely different confidence when it comes to high-altitude camps.”

What keys have you had in your high-altitude training?

“We’ve done blocks of four days and then a day of rest and then four new training days. Then we’ve increased the block by block and ensured there were opportunities for recovery. On my last camp, I did my absolute best speed session at altitude ever, and still, I came home feeling fresh from a camp. Those answers make me feel that a tour with races at altitude feels doable,” says Lundgren.