Emma Ribom and Jonna Sundling are concerned about the Swedish national team’s lack of altitude training camps. Now, the duo chose to run their altitude plan.

While the Swedish cross-country stars Maja Dahlqvist, Frida Karlsson and Linn Svahn are training outside of the Swedish national team, Emma Ribom and Jonna Sundling are still part of the national team. This means that the duo will participate in the six national team training camps before the start of the season. But in July, the two stars still travel to their private training camp in Lavaze, Italy. 

Paying For Themselves

Like the Norwegian national team, the Swedes have not planned any high-altitude camps for the World Cup season 2022/23. Except for the pandemic year in 2020, it is the first time in several decades that the Swedish national team does not travel to altitude camps, according to SportExpressen. 

Four of the six training camps the Swedish national team has set up this year have been added to different locations in Sweden. The reason is that it costs too much to arrange such camps abroad. 

However, the cross-country skiing manager Lars Öberg denies this. He explains that the assembly plan is laid out according to the skiers’ wishes. Too much travel was an important reason why Dahlqvist and Karlsson chose to be outside the national team this year. 

But Ribom and Sundling are concerned about the lack of altitude training camps from the Swedish national team this year.

“They see an opportunity to develop through training camps at high altitude. They experience that they get an effect from it,” says coach Magnus Ingesson to SportExpressen. 

Therefore, the two skiers now choose to organize their altitude plan and pay for it out of their pocket. 

“Emma and Jonna had wanted to travel to Val Senales in October. But this year, the national team has added the October camp to Vålådalen, so it is not possible. That is why we choose to travel to Italy this July,” says Ingesson, who became a personal trainer for Sundling and Ribom this spring. 

“They pay for the training camp in July,” concludes Ingesson.