Max Treinen was a US World Junior Team member in 2006. He has traininged with Jan Buron's Alaska Winter Stars program since he was 8 years old, and he will be skiing for the Unoversity of Alaska Anchorage next year.
This fall I decided to spend the 2006-2007 schoolyear in Sweden. Because of visa problems over which I shan’t go into any detail in this piece of writing, I ended up spending but four months.
I lived in Järpen, Sweden, a little town on the highway between Östersund and Trondheim. Here I was a student in the ski gymnasium, a program with the Åre/Järpen school. The ski gymnasium is divided into three groups: Alpine, Freestyle, and Cross-country. The students in the ski program complete the mandatory three-year high school in four years; an arrangement which allows four half-schooldays a week to accommodate training. The first and second year students in the ski gymnasium—J1s—train together in the afternoons after attending classes in the mornings while the third and fourth years—OJs—do the opposite. The first year students lived mostly in the elevhem, a dormitory owned by the ski gymnasium, while the older kids generally had apartments within walking distance of the school. During my stay, I lived in the elevhem.
Right away, I was surprised by their training. I had expected there to be something special, or some secret to their training that separated it from what I was used to. Instead, there was nothing remarkable about their program. In a typical workout during the fall, we would rollerski from Järpen out along Kallvägen, a very flat road to the town of Kall, some twenty kilometers from Järpen. After one hour, the coach would have us stop and ski back to the school. I felt in many ways that the training I was used to with AWS was better than the training in Sweden.
I don’t mean to suggest, however, that I didn’t enjoy it. One aspect of their training that I thought was really excellent was the training camps. On the first weekend of school, we had a camp in a nearby village called VÃ¥lÃ¥dalen. In the middle of September, the third and fourth year cross-country skiers drove down through Sweden to Gothenburg, took the ferry to Kiel, Germany, and then drove through Germany to Ramsau, Austria for a ten-day training camp. Between having the entire Russian National Team staying at our hotel and skiing on the Dachstein Glacier each morning, I can’t describe how cool it was. It was also a huge relief to be able to speak English with an American biathlete who was also training there.
This situation, of course, begins to resolve itself with the passage of time, and I have no doubt that I would have found the second semester considerably more comfortable than the first. It does not happen quickly, however, and for me it was a little bit difficult.
With none of this whining am I, for a minute, asserting that it was a bad experience. Nor am I suggesting that, given another chance, I would not make the same decision. I do not feel that my race results improved this year after living in Scandinavia, but I believe with conviction in the value of this experience, and that it will only help me in the future. I left in August with some luggage. I returned four months later with knowledge of another culture, new friends and with a very unique experience. I had become fluent in another language, become more independent, and overcome a challenge. Taking this into account, the loss of most of my luggage was no great tragedy.
Because of what I gained, I feel that going to Sweden was a great decision for me. I recommend living in another country to anyone my age who feels prepared for the challenge. My advice is to receive everything with an open mind, don’t think too much, keep training, and things will work out. If not, they probably wouldn’t have worked out anyway.
With the perspective I gained from spending this time in Sweden, I have also begun to understand that there is nothing that distinguishes the training in Europe from that in North America. There are no secrets in the Europeans’ workouts that account for their success. The difference then lies in the system. In order to be a successful skier, one must have talent, motivation, cumulative hours of training, et cetera. In the US, a successful skier must have at least as much in these faculties as his European counterpart and much more. The US athlete must also be concerned with supporting himself in his current and future situation and managing study and training, and keep a desire to excel even if the culture isn’t telling him to. The European system makes it easier by eliminating as many of these obstacles as possible. They do whatever they can not to waste talent. If the best skier on the team has no motivation, the coach calls him on his cell phone and asks him to kindly get out of bed and walk up to the school for eight o’clock training on one of his half-schoolday mornings because he needs to get in shape in order to deserve the government stipend he is receiving.
But all of this is just advantage, and where is it written that the most fortunate will win? I raced with them. Sometimes I lost, but I have learned that it can be done. Now, after this experience, every time I go out to train, I can do it with confidence that it is possible to succeed.
