Sweden
76’ers
Lennart Julin for IAAF
8 March 2001 - If you were into astrology you probably would say that there is some sublime celestial explanation. But even if you are more materialistic you could still not deny that there is something special with the Swedish 76’ers in athletics.
For more than a decade Sweden had relied on the likes of Patrik Sjöberg, Sven Nylander och Patrik Bodén to bring home the medals and the top placings from the major international athletics championships. But the Sydney Olympics brought by a definitive change of guards.
Sjöberg and Nylander had concluded their careers after the previous Olympics and Bodén was once more bothered by a serious injury. But happily this void was immediately fill when a new generation of Swedish athletes moved into prominence in Sydney: Kajsa Bergqvist bronze medallist in the women’s high jump, Stefan Holm and Staffan Strand 4th an 6th in the men’s high jump and Robert Kronberg 8th in the men’s 110m hurdles.
And it definitely is a (singular!) generation as all four of them were born within in less than six months in the year 1976. A year special to Swedish athletics also in another way as we then got our first Olympic gold medal since 1948 when Anders Gärderud won the steeplechase in a world record time. So there might have been something special with the stars after all ...
Being just 24 years old Kajsa, Stefan, Staffan and Robert rather than seeing Sydney as a culmination of their athletic career viewed it as the encouraging beginning. So there was absolutely no problem for any of them to find the motivation necessary to get quickly back into training in the post-Sydney autumn.
One important inspiration was the upcoming World Indoor Championships in Lisbon as although the four athletes were quite happy with the Sydney outcome they all came away with the feeling that it was not "perfect" in any way. Both Stefan and Staffan cleared the same height as the silver medallist and Kajsa was oh-so-close to make 2.03 which would have got her the gold medal.
The current indoor season has further strengthened the feeling that the best is yet to come: Robert has had no less than six hurdle races within 0.03 of the national record he set in the final of last winter’s European Indoor Championships. This indicates that a major improvement is due to come any day now.
Kajsa is leading the world list at 1.99 and Stefan and Staffan are joint 2nd at 2.34 – and all these jumps were with centimetres to spare when winning the GE Globen Galan indoor meet in Stockholm against fields very similar to the ones they will be facing now in Lisbon.
At the press conference after that memorable evening in Stockholm Kajsa made the comment: "It is a little eerie feeling that we three – that have known each other and competed at the same meets since we were just 11-12 years old - sit here together today at the podium as new world leaders in the same event."
But we probably have to blame the stars and the planets for that, don’t we? And by the way, the Swedish 76’ers has even more to offer in the near future.
Long jumper Peter Häggström just very narrowly missed qualifying for Lisbon after consistent 8m-jumping during the winter and triple jump record holder Camilla Johansson expects to be back in full force for Edmonton after taking this indoor season off to take care of a knee injury.
