By Teemu Virtanen

Team Igne is a Swedish Pro Team that aims to take it up a notch in Season X under the supervision of the three-time Vasaloppet winner Jörgen Brink. He is happy with his team and says that they made a comprehensive plan for training and racing early in the spring. Since then, they have had a training camp per month, except July. According to Jörgen, everyone has worked well over the summer and they now seem to be quite equal in terms of training load and workout intensity. Last week, they went to Mallorca, Spain, like so many other Pro Teams.

“We tested the place for the first time,” Jörgen says eagerly. “It worked well. It’s a great place with lots of good roads, different climbs in the mountains and great weather for training. We did a lot of roller-skiing and some running. We used pretty much the whole scale of training intensity; a long workout followed by a climbing one the next day, then a hard session followed by a short one and so on. Our athletes have done a good job, and I think they are ready for what’s coming up in the winter. Of course, I’m curious about their performance capacity compared to the other teams, but I think we have made some great progress. I certainly hope so!”

Team Igne will start their on-snow training in Saxnäs, Sweden next month. Jörgen’s gang consists of three promising male athletes who managed to be in the top 30 at Vasaloppet; Niklas Henriksson 20^th, Klas Nilsson 23^rd and Johan Lövgren 29^th. These three were able to get other good results during the winter, and their only female skier Sofia Lindberg finished 14^th at Tjejvasan, but it seems that she won’t do that many races next season. If Jörgen is right about his team’s development, we will see these guys quite high up in the result lists when Season X is in full swing.