At WOC 2018 in Latvia I finally got my debut on an individual forest competition, and I am satisfied with the resulting 9th place in the middle distance. My race was technically good, with only some minor mistakes and some non-optimal route choices, and I am happy that I was able to pull out such a good performance on day X. My performance in the sprint final (and qualification), however, was not as good as I expected from myself, and with the 23rd place I am far from satisfied. Therefore, I was very eager to show that I can run well in sprint when I got the chance to run the 1st leg as a reserve the day after, and I am very happy with how I could turn the disappointment in the sprint to a good performance in the sprint relay. I changed over to Øystein Kvaal Østerbø (2nd) with the lead in 3rd position, and with good performances also from him, Håkon Jarvis Westergård (3rd) and Andrine Benjaminsen (4th) we were in the fight for the medals all the way to the finish line, and got a good 4th position in the end!
For the first time I have been selected to run a forest distance at the World Championships! With good performances in both the sprint and the middle distance at the selection races this weekend, I have been selected to run both distances at WOC in Latvia in the beginning of August. The selection week started with a sprint on Wednesday last week which I won (<1 sec). Then the selection races continued with sprint, middle and long distance races from Friday to Sunday. I ended those races as 2nd in the sprint, 2nd in the middle, and 5th in the long distance.
The Venla Relay is always a highlight, and so it was also this year. We had the exact same team as last year with Sarina Jenzer at 1st, me at 2nd, Simone Niggli at 3rd and Sabine Hauswirth at the 4th. In the flat terrain with ice age depression the relay became a tight competition. Sarina started well, and changed over to me in 11th position. I ran safely through my leg, except one mistake towards the end and could send out Simone as 6th. Simone ran well, and brought us into the lead. Sabine ran a safe last leg, but did not have the power to follow the fastest girls. She, however, secured our goal of a top 6 position, by running us in to the 6th position! Fun that we could run with the leading teams through out the whole relay! Thank you to everyone in the raskt tog team and OL norska for the whole road to Venla!