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Tag: Mikael Lofgren

  • After Disappoining Season, Löfgren Steps Down as Norwegian Biathlon Coach

    After Disappoining Season, Löfgren Steps Down as Norwegian Biathlon Coach

    Ole Einar Bjørndalen (r) led off for the Norwegians in the World Championships relay, a race where the men won their last title for Mikael Lofgren. Symbolically for their season as a whole, Bjørndalen struggled on the range.

    In late March, Norwegian biathlon ace Emil Hegle Svendsen complained to broadcaster NRK that the national team coaches were not spending enough time with the athletes, and that he hoped to see some changes.

    He was speaking out of frustration: after the World Cup title had seemingly been within his reach – indeed he wore the yellow bib several times – Svendsen ended up second to Martin Fourcade of France in the rankings. Despite winning gold in the World Championships relay, it was one of the worst seasons for the Norwegian men in years.

    Svendsen had tried to pin down what went wrong, saying that technique coach Torgeir Bjørn, who is also a commentator for NRK, was particularly absent and worked with the athletes mostly by phone.

    “At least the women’s team has two biathlon coaches,” he said at the time. “We had a shooting coach and a physical trainer. Either the shooting coach is present or nobody is there. It is hard for us.”

    It is now April and there have indeed been changes to the Norwegian coaching roster, but not exactly Svendsen had been suggesting. While federation leaders have reportedly asked Bjørn to choose between commentating and coaching, the one definite change has been the resignation of men’s head coach Mikael Löfgren.

    “We realized that we need new blood on the men’s team, and it suited me to leave right now,” Löfgren told Swedish radio.

    Svendsen, above, had been critical of Lofgren – but more so of Torgeir Bjørn.

    Erlend Slokvik, the vice president of the Norwegian federation, asserted that Löfgren, whose tenure until this season had brought incredible success to the men’s team, had not been fired.

    “As a whole, we have not been satisfied with the results this year,” Slokvik told the VG newspaper. “It’s been a tough season and we have not got the results we wanted. Mikael found out that it was okay to give up.”

    Löfgren, a Swede, was the overall World Cup champion in 1992 before turning to coaching. He worked at the National Sports Academy in Torsby beginning in 2000 and then took over as the U.S. national team coach in 2006 and left for Norway in 2008.

    When he arrived, Norway was riding high: Ole Einar Bjørndalen had just won an overall World Cup title and Svendsen had been close behind in third. That success continued under Löfgren’s leadership, with the pair repeating their positions in the standings in 2009. Then Svendsen won the title in 2010 and newcomer Tarjei Bø in 2011.

    This season, Martin Fourcade of France put on a dominating run at World Championships and then the final World Cup, becoming the first non-Norwegian to win the total score since Germany’s Michal Greis in 2007.

    It was a season not without highlights for the Norwegians, as Svendsen took a handful of victories, Bjørndalen and Bø won once each, and the team earned another World Championship relay title.

    Bjørndalen working to make up ground in the relay after a raft of errors on the range.

    But Bø seeming to be a completely different athlete than the year before and Bjørndalen was recovering from an injury; the pair placed seventh and sixteenth in the final rankings. Time and time again, the entire squad struggled, including in the World Championships pursuit, where they missed a devastating total of 19 shots and prompted much outcry in the Norwegian media.

    “I feel completely awful,” Löfgren told the VG newspaper at the time. “It’s no fun. The guys can do so much better, but they don’t show it.”

    It wasn’t the only time that the Norwegians were undone by poor shooting, and when the team finished World Championships without an individual gold medal there was speculation that Löfgren would be sacked. But the parting seemed to be relatively amicable, and Slokvik, the federation vice president, told media that Löfgren had been offered another job with the association.

    Both Löfgren and the federation’s management seemed to be at a loss for why results had taken a tumble this season, saying that the team had been run almost identically to the previous, much more successful, year. To try to improve their fortunes next season, the team will ask the head coach to travel more with the athletes. Löfgren told NRK that he was uninterested in doing so and wanted to spend more time at home.

    A new head coach has not yet been selected, but the federation has stated that it will be a Norwegian.

  • Svendsen Wins 20k Individual, Then Come a Pair of Silvers

    Svendsen Wins 20k Individual, Then Come a Pair of Silvers

    Ole Einar Bjoerndalen waiting for Sergey Novikov (BLR) to finish his last loop

    Anyone watching knew that it was going to be close.

    When Sergey Novikov (BLR) left the range after his final round of shooting in the 20k individual start, he led Norwegians Emil Hegle Svendsen and Ole Einar Bjoerndalen by seven and 26 seconds, respectively. But Novikov’s lead was due to good shooting, not fast skiing, and the question was whether he could hold on.

    For the two Norwegians, who had already finished racing, the nine minutes and eleven seconds Novikov took to ski his last loop must have felt like an eternity. As the Belarusian came back into the stadium, it was clear that Svendsen would win. But the battle between Bjoerndalen and Novikov would come down to the wire.

    Sergey Novikov (BLR) leaving the range during the 20k individual

    Novikov finally crossed in 48 minutes, 32 seconds, and zero tenths—the exact same time as Bjoerndalen’s. The race for silver was a tie—the first time in the sport’s Olympic history that had ever happened.

    “It’s amazing that they can be so close. I think this is good for biathlon,” said Mikael Lofgren, the Norwegian biathlon coach, adding that the result today speaks to the depth and competitiveness of the men’s field.

    Svendsen shot clean in the first three stages, and combined with some blistering skiing, the race appeared to be his to win. Novikov didn’t miss a shot all day, but his skiing speed wasn’t even close to either of the Norwegians.

    But in the final shooting stage, Svendsen couldn’t quite seal things, and missed a single shot, setting up some suspense after his finish as he waited for first Bjoerndalen and then Novikov to come to the line.

    Bjoerndalen was actually ahead of Svendsen after the latter’s penalty in the last stage, but then Bjoerndalen had a miss of his own.

    He left the range seventeen seconds behind Svendsen, and given Bjoerndalen’s superior skiing speed, it looked like the pair could finish in a dead

    Emil Hegle Svendsen (NOR) on his way to the finish

    heat.

    Bjoerndalen took a glance at the scoreboard on the way out of the stadium, and he said afterwards that he knew just how far behind he was.

    “We have four kilometers on the last lap, and I was a little bit afraid to start too fast,” he said. “Maybe I waited a little bit too long—if I could have started a little bit earlier, maybe I could have taken three or four seconds more. But ten seconds [the gap that remained at the finish] was too much.”

    Novikov didn’t succumb to the pressure on his last round of shooting, both entering and leaving as the leader after hitting all five targets. As he went

    out on course for his final loop, he enjoyed an eight second advantage over Svendsen and 25 seconds over Bjoerndalen. But Novikov’s fitness isn’t close to that of the Norwegians, and he said that he got over-excited and went out a little too hard up on the first climb.

    “Indeed, the energy was depleted,” he said through a translator.

    He wasn’t fast enough to beat Svendsen, but the effort was exactly enough to match Bjoerndalen, although Novikov didn’t appear to lunge for the line—which could have made the difference.

    He and Bjoerndalen shared the second step of the podium during the flower ceremony. Both will receive silvers.

    Novikov in the range