Post Worlds - Team Sweden Update (a summary of this article)
The picture shows six of the eight team members from this year's World Championships, only missing Veronica Wagner (on vacation abroad) and Nicole Wanström, who's back at her home gym in Stockholm.
Ece Ayan, who was the alternate in China, has switched gym and is now training together with the rest of Sweden's top gymnasts in Eskilstuna [Eskiltuna's gymnastics club is the swedish equivalent to Chow's, Texas Dreams, Parkettes and MG Elite all mashed together]. Ece moved in to team mate Lovisa Estberg's house, and Ece, Lovisa, Kim Sungmang and Emma Larsson are all in the same class in high school!
Then there is a really cute part about how the girls love spending time together, and then about the training approach. During the winter the focus is to get back in fantastic physical shape, and in January starts the preparation for this year's competitions, with focus on the European and World Championships. At the moment do they train for 27,5 hours a week, excluding physical therapy and a short pass on Saturdays. They train in the mornings and afternoon's, always eat lunch together and Jonna and Ida (who graduated this spring) usually drive the rest of the team to school.
At last Emma Larsson talks about her training and motivation; "I'm where I want to be, I'm here because I want to, how can someone believe something else [she's referring to the huge controversy the Swedish Gymnastics Federation went trough a while ago]? Sometimes when I get the question if training 30+ hours a week is exhausting I can get really angry. I'm not a robot or someone's marionette doll! Of course it's hard sometimes, all things are, including school and work, but I know what I want."