2001 Overall Sprint World Cup winner — Didn’t Focus Enough

2000-2001 Overall Sprint World Cup winner, Norwegian Morten Brors did not manage to muster enough motivation for sprint training. He is now a new member of the Norwegian long distance (Worldloppet) team. The former super-sprinter has always enjoyed racing long races:

“That’s what I enjoy — long races are always exciting. I started doing long mass-start races when I was 16-years old. I always checked if it would work out to race the Swedish Vasaloppet even when I focused on World Cup sprint races.”

Brors best in The Vasaloppet is 11th, and last year he captured 5th place in the Norwegian 50K Championship race.

He has proven that he can ski well in long races but his fame came in the sprint.

“It was good enough to be naturally fast in the beginning of FIS sprint World Cup Racing. The (racing) level is now much higher. The best sprinters have several years of specialized training for sprint under their belts. I wasn’t quite able to hang on- I was not able to find the right motivation for sprint. The training got too half-hearted — not serious enough”.

The Lathi World Championship was held the year after Brors won the World Cup, however he did not qualify for that event due to poor showing in qualification races around Christmas.

“I was in good shape during the time of the Championship and even won the last sprint World Cup race right before Lahti and would probably have raced well if I had been given the chance”

He is now focusing on the upcoming Worldloppet racing season and need to make some changes in his training routines.

“Not much speed and explosiveness anymore — It’s important to get in the long workouts including double pole workouts on rollerskis and skis. Double poling is an important skill.”

He admits that he has trained less than what he had planned this summer.

“Too much of “other things” than training — it’s good that the important part of the season doesn’t start before in January. I need the period from now until then for training.”

It should be interesting to watch the final sprint in a Worldloppet race with Brors involved!