A Tough Year For Sweden?
It struck me glancing at the results last weekend that I feel like Sweden has been having a bit of a sub-par year. Which might seem a little strange, given Johan Olsson’s recent return to form, but hear me out. Certainly, they’ve had some skiers with some great results. But I feel like overall they’ve struggled a bit. When I glanced at a summary of their men’s distance results, it seemed I might be imagining things:
But then when you look at some other categories, you see something different. For instance, men’s sprinting:
That’s a pretty consistent decline across the board. Of course, this comes after a fairly recent resurgence. And the explanation is pretty clear:
Hellner and Modin are simply not having a good time with the sprinting this year.
The Swedish women have had similar problems, beginning with distance events:
and continuing with sprints:
