Emil Joensson (SWE) – a Favorite for the Sprint

The Swedish men’s team to the sprint consists of Emil Joensson, who is the World Cup sprint leader and winner of the last World Cup in Drammen, Marcus Hellner, Jesper Modin (the sprint winner at the Swedish nationals) and Teodor Peterson. Peterson replaces Mats Larsson, who woke up Wednesday morning with a cold and was shipped off to Sweden stat.

While Joensson still has to win a medal at a major championship, he feels up to the task before the World Championship sprint in Oslo.

“This is a very peculiar course. There is a long hill in there and then some flats, really tight turns and a short, fast finish. It’s going to be really hard to conserve any energy for the final sprint. You have to be in position a lot earlier, bit sometimes that’s hard and it’s really exhausting,” Joensson said at the press conference Wednesday morning.

“I just want to have a good race. The challenge is to beat the others. The course is narrow and tight, so you’ve got to be on the ball when things happen,” Joensson concluded, pointing out that the field is wide open and that there are a lot of strong candidates for the final.