After many seasons with several breaks in training due to illness and injuries, Ella Gjœmle is finally healthy and ready to train with her teammates on the Norwegian National Team.
Illness and injuries have expectedly affected her prior training, but Ella now looks forward to the future.
Prior to last season she decided to have her tonsils removed, which dramatically reduced her normal number of infections. Staying healthy and injury free should make a big difference in terms of training efficiency towards next season.
Even though last year’s pre-season training wasn’t all smooth, it was a great step forward, which clearly made a difference in terms of results. Ella started last season with one of her best ever races, where she got second after Marit Bjorgen in the season opener. During the Norwegian National Championship, she beat Bjorgen for the Sprint Gold – and gave Bjorgen one of her only two Sprint defeats all year. Noone now doubted Gjœmle’s capacity, the question was however how she could handle an entire World Cup field. The answer came shortly thereafter, in the World Cup Sprint competition in downtown Stockholm, Sweden where she captured the bronze.
Despite the strong improvements in Sprint, and being one of the favorites for this winter’s World Championship Sprint in classical technique, she is not prioritizing Sprint.
– I think a bit about sprint, but not enough to do much specific Sprint training. We will however have two specific Sprint training camps for the National Team this year.
Even though Ella has clearly see her best results in Sprint, -117 World Cup Sprint points, and only 17 World Cup distance points, she points out she does not want to become a Sprint specialist, but says:
– I used to be best in Sprint, but have plans to also ski fast in other distances this year.
