A trio of Swedish National Team skiers were on the starting line for the Ski Classics Challengers event Klarälvsloppet. William Poromaa finished 38th, and Marcus Grate was three places better than that. Calle Halfvarsson was in the leading group all the way to the finish in Karlstad, finishing in the 13th place.

“An okay race from my side, but it was hard. In fact, this is a personal record for me. I’ve never gone this far before. But I feel that this is not my thing. I need to use my legs; I’m a traditional skier,” says Halfvarsson, who joined a breakaway after about 20km of racing:

“The plan for the race was that I wanted to have a good training session. I wasn’t so keen on just ‘riding’ and staying in the group. It was so slow there that I wanted to pick up the pace. And it was very good training; you really get toughened up by double poling for so long,” says Halfvarsson, according to Langd.se.

Halfvarsson switched ski clubs last summer from Sågmyra to IFK Mora, and at that time, questions were asked about the possibilities of racing Vasaloppet. But now he hesitates about the 90km journey between Sälen and Mora:

“It takes a lot to be at Vasaloppet. I am not trained for this. We also have to double pole in our races in traditional skiing, but then there’s diagonal skiing in between. It suits me better,” concludes Halfvarsson.

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