Just over a year ago, Anton Grahn won the sprint at the Junior World Championships in Whistler, Canada. He continued the season and the roller skiing summer with impressive results, including winning the sprint at the Summer Swedish Championships (for seniors) and three gold medals at the Junior Roller Ski World Championships. 

But then there was a ‘stone’ in the road. He had to stop his training when he suffered a stress fracture:

“Physically, it felt better and better all the time. I felt how I was developing, but in terms of my body, I went over the limit”, says Grahn to Langd.se.

Were you too ambitious to improve? 

“It may have been. But I learned a lot for the future. I won’t push the limits so much for the upcoming dryland season and will pay more attention to my body’s signals. But I received outstanding help from both the ski high school and the national team, which allowed me to come back quite quickly anyway”, says Grahn, who competed in his first races of the season at the World Junior Championship trials in Falun in mid-January (where he won both races).

At the Junior World Championships, he won an individual silver in the sprint and took home gold in the relay with Mira Göransson, Alvar Myhlback, and Evelina Crüsell.

For the next season, the Småland native, wearing the Mora colors, will step up as a senior. But he has already tested the competition, which will await in the coming seasons.

This weekend, he finished 23rd in the sprint prologue in Falun.

In the quarterfinals, he faced Johannes Høsflot Klæbo and Erik Valnes, among others. He finished third in the heat, just six-tenths from winning the heat, meaning that he finished fourteenth in the competition:

“Next season, I hope to be able to challenge for final spots,” says Grahn, who will face senior competition again this week at the Swedish Championships week in Boden:

“The plan is to compete in the sprint relay on Thursday and then the remaining competitions after that,” says Anton Grahn.