Travel Letter from Junior VM

After two consecutive weekends of World Cup and Junior World Cup events, it was finally time for the Junior World Championships for five of our athletes. There, they competed against participants from 39 nations.

This season, the ISU has changed the format of the Junior World Championships to four days of competition. There were two qualifying days on Thursday and Friday, followed by repechage and finals on Saturday and Sunday.

On the first day, Fredrik managed to qualify directly for the main event in the 1500m (semifinal) and 500m (quarterfinal). The others advanced to the repechage on Saturday morning (Guro in the 1500m/500m, Eirik in the 1500m, and Linus in the 500m).

Friday started off well, with both Fredrik and Tinius advancing from the preliminaries to the heats in the 1000m. In the heats, Guro, Fredrik, and Tinius secured spots in the repechage on Sunday morning. In the quarterfinals of the men’s 3000m relay, we were drawn into an exciting match-up against Japan, Hungary, and Great Britain. Fredrik, Eirik, Tinius, and Linus delivered a fantastic performance, beating both Hungary and Great Britain to secure second place behind Japan. This qualified them for the semifinals on Saturday.

Saturday started brilliantly with Fredrik advancing to the A-final in the 1500m, finishing 6th out of 67 participants in the distance! Reaching an A-final in an international championship is a significant achievement for the sport in Norway. This was an incredibly inspiring result for Fredrik, the support team, and all Norwegian short track skaters. It demonstrates that pursuing short track in Norway can lead to success at the international elite level.

In the 500m, Fredrik received a penalty in the quarterfinal. In the relay semifinal, we faced Kazakhstan, Japan, and Italy. Unfortunately, we missed an exchange and received a penalty. Despite this, we secured a strong 8th place overall out of 18 nations.

On Sunday, Guro, Fredrik, and Tinius competed in the 1000m repechage. Unfortunately, none of them managed to pass through the narrow qualification threshold, where only the top two advanced to the main event.

Overall, it was a great boost for the Norwegian team with a fantastic result in the relay and Fredrik's performance in the 1500m. The next events on the schedule are the NC final in Trondheim on March 9-10, the World Championships in Rotterdam on March 15-17, and the Norwegian Championships in Lillehammer on March 22-24.

Results

1500m

Guro 35th place

Fredrik 6th place

Eirik 37th place

1000m

Guro 45th place

Fredrik 28th place

Tinius 52th place

500m

Guro 43th place

Fredrik 19th place

Linus 34th place

3000m Relay: Norge 8th place

Written by coach Einar Agdestein