Junior World Championships finalist Erica Lavén has moved to the USA for studies and skiing, with Salt Lake City as her base. Reactions in Sweden are mixed, both positive and negative.

Langd.se was the first to report that the girl from Täby, who competes for Åsarna IK along with her old clubmate Carl Rune, was heading to the USA for studies and to pursue her skiing career from there.
Now Erica herself talks about the move, which has surprised many.
– “It comes as a shock,” she admits to Expressen.

For several years, she has been one of Sweden’s most promising juniors. In the past season, she made it all the way to the finals of the Junior World Championships sprint in Planica and also won the Junior Swedish Championships in the shortest distance, ahead of Hanna Stenmark and Linnea Björkman. Additionally, she made her World Cup debut.

Many are surprised

Therefore, many find it surprising that she is now choosing to leave Sweden and pursue her career on the other side of the Atlantic. The 20-year-old explains why.

“There is a bit of a wall to the national team. There are many established skiers who are among the best in the world. And most of them are young. We are maybe ten people just outside the team who are very even. It’s even hard to make it into the Bauhaus team (the level below the national team),” she tells Expressen.

Together with the promising Carl Rune, studies at the University of Utah and competing in the North American college league await. Many Swedes have done this before. Some have improved, while quite a few have stalled in their development toward the elite.

Read more: Collegiate skiing: Racing, studying and meeting the President of the United States

Will she be forgotten?

“I’ve received many questions. If I’m going to quit, why I’m going there, if I don’t want to continue fully committing. But that doesn’t shock me. The idea of going to the USA hasn’t been presented well before,” Erica tells the evening paper and continues:


”I think I will be forgotten. I’m prepared for that. People won’t know what’s happening over here. It will be a bit of mental training for me, to fly under the radar and focus on my own thing. For the first year at least, I don’t feel the need to be remembered back home.”

Wants to compete in both the Olympics and the World Championships

However, Erica Lavén has no plans to get worse, and her goal is to compete in both the Winter Olympics in Italy 2026 and the World Championships at home in Falun 2027.

“People will remember if I come home from the USA and really perform well. It will be like a shock. And it’s kind of fun to think about,” she says in the interview.