Nilsson, Stina

Childhood

Stina Nilson was born on June 24, 1993 in the small town of Malung, Dalarna County , Sweden, into the family of excavator driver Richard Nilsson (born in 1966) and a worker of the social insurance agency in the municipality of Malun Karin. Little Stina was a very wayward child. At age 12, Stina began to visit family psychologist Rune Gustafsson. The reason for this, in her own words, was her excessive desire to compete and win ^[1] :

I had very high demands on myself when I was a child, and I think I started visiting Runa because of this. I did not like to lose. I was focused only on ... to win. To win, to win, to win ... I always liked to compete in everything ... And I can still be very upset if I lose, for example, in cards ...

In 1998, Stina won her first victory in a ski tournament - children's Vasaloppet ^[2] . In addition to skiing, she also practiced football and orienteering, but the fear of getting a ball in the head and getting lost in the forest “helped” her to make the right choice.

Stina often recalls her childhood training in her native Malung ^[3] :

I think I had a lot of fun skiing when I was little. We gathered at 6 p.m. every Tuesday and Thursday and trained. In the summer we had a big gang ... it was a lot of fun. We also had a very good ski trainer, who himself had a daughter ... Anneli Fagerlund, who means a lot to me and it was she who made me go even further.

Career

Start

Stina began her professional career on November 14, 2009 , winning the junior sprint in Brooksvallarn. In March 2010, at the Junior Championship of Sweden, she won the 1 km sprint race ^[4] .

In January 2011, Stina first performed at the international tournament - the youth world championship in the Estonian city of Otepää , taking part in two races: 5 km free style (71 place) and a 1.2 km sprint classic (12 place) ^[4] .

In February 2011, she won the sprint classics at the European Youth Olympic Festival in Czech Liberec , and in March she won the free-style sprint at the country's youth championship ^[4] .

First Successes

In February 2012, at the Youth World Championships in Turkish Erzurum, Stina won two medals - gold in the free-style sprint and silver in the 4 x 3.3 km relay ^[4] .

In the World Cup, Nilsson made her debut in 2012 in the Norwegian Drammen , having managed to show only 23 place in the sprint race. In April of the same year, she first tried herself in the 30 km race at the Swedish championship (12th place) ^[4] .

In January 2013, for the first time, she was in the top three at the World Cup stage in the team sprint, taking second place. Here, a week later, at the Youth World Championships, Stina won 2 gold: a sprint and a 4 x 3.3 km relay. In February, she took part in the world championship in skiing in the Italian Val di Fiemme (5th place in the sprint) ^[4] .

At the 2014 Olympics, 20-year-old Stina won bronze in the team sprint classic style (along with Ida Ingemarsdotter ). At the last stage at the finish, Stina was able to get ahead of the German Denise Herrman. In the freestyle personal sprint at the 2014 Games, Stina took 10th place without reaching the finals.

In the overall standings of the world cup of the 2013/2014 season, Stina became the 35th (72nd place in distance views and 12th place in the sprint).

Season 2014/2015

In the 2014/2015 season , she climbed 4 times to the podium of the World Cup stages: in the individual sprint - in Davos (2nd place), in Otepää (2nd place) and Östersund (3rd place); in the team sprint - in Otepää paired with Ida Ingemarsdotter (1st place).

At the Falun World Ski Championships, Stina won 3 silver medals. In the individual sprint with classic style at the finish, Nilsson lost 0.42 seconds to Norwegian Marit Bjergen , although she won twice as much in the quarterfinals. In the free-style team sprint with Ida, Ingemarsdotter again lost only to the Norwegian team. The last race for Stina in this championship was the 4 x 5 km relay race, where the Swedes again lost only to the Norwegians.

In the overall standings of the World Cup, Stina Nilsson was only 21st, while in the sprint standings - 4th.

Season 2015/2016

In November 2015, Nilsson took the 2nd place in the overall standings at the Nordic Opening (finished 2nd twice). In December 2015, in the Swiss Davos, Stina managed to take first place at the World Cup for the first time in her career, beating all rivals in her favorite sprint . In the overall standings, the Tour de Ski was only the 24th, as she took part in only 3 races and did not participate in the sprint.

At the World Cup stage in Slovenian Planica, she won the individual and team sprints. At the end of the season, during the Tour of Canada , she won one sprint race and was again 2nd.

In the overall standings of the World Cup, Stina Nilsson was 11th, while in the sprint standings - 3rd.

Season 2016/2017

She won 4 of 7 stages of the Tour de Ski 2016/2017 , but in the overall standings of the multi-day event she became only the third after Heidi Weng and Krista Pärmyakoski , losing to them only during the passage of the “Final Mountain”.

During the season, Stina won several more races in the World Cup. In the overall standings of the World Cup, Nilsson was 4th (6th in distance views and 2nd in sprint).

Season 2017/2018

At the beginning of June 2017, at an assembly in the Norwegian Sognefjället near Stina, an imbalance of the body caused by high loads was found ^[5] . For some time, I had to reduce the intensity of training. In late June, Nilsson joined the team at the training camp of the Swedish Thorsby. ^[6]

Stina's new season, like a year ago, begins with a sprint victory in Finnish Hand . However, in the overall standings Nordic Opening is only 7th, showing 8th and 13th places in the other two races.

The tour de Ski Stina missed for the sake of preparing the house in Sweden for future starts ^[7] . Before the start of the Olympics, she won the sprint race at the World Cup in Planica.

At the Winter Olympics in the classic sprint, she managed to leave everyone behind and win a landslide victory ^[8] . A few days later she added to her collection the silver medal of relay games. Stina won another silver in the team sprint with Charlotte Calla, unexpectedly losing to the Americans. In the last race at the 30 km mass start, she won the bronze medal with classics, ahead of the Norwegian Ingvild Ostberg in the fierce struggle by 1.5 seconds.

After the Olympics, Stina spent only two races at the World Cup, in which she twice became the 2nd. As a result - not getting into the top ten overall standings (with 2nd place in sprinters). In total, at the end of the season, 36 World Cup podiums: 33 for individual races and 3 for the overall standings of the Tours.

Season 2018/2019

Before the official start of the season, Stina performed at the Brooksvalsloppet traditional annual ski tournament, where she showed the third result in the 30 km mass start and the second in the sprint and individual race.

The first stage of the World Cup of the new season was held without a podium: 6th place in the sprint and 11th place in the individual race. Lillehammer Triple turned out to be more successful for Stina - 2nd place in the sprint, but this was not enough to take the prize at the end of the tour.

In Swiss Davos, Stina became the 1st in the sprint in the free style and only 39 in the individual 10 km race in the free style.

World Cup

Olympic Games

World Ski Championships

Youth World Championships

Stina is an atypical example of a modern athlete. She considers herself a successor to the old ski school. She considers the best training in the deep forest. She herself regards skiing as a professional sport with cool ^[1] :

If someone asks, “What are you doing?” - I say: “Well, I'm skiing!”

Sports journalist Dagens Nigeters Johan Esk wrote about Steen ^[1] :

She has very great sprint tactical abilities. Her power is her mind. She is capable of doing everything she thinks. I believe that Stina Nilsson will be the next big Swedish ski star.

Ski expert Lena Andersson compared Stina with Soviet athletes ^[1] :

She resembles Russians in skiing in Soviet times and has the same large body. Both physically and in style, she resembles Zimyatov , although he was bigger.

Single. In summer she lives in a rented apartment in Thorsby, in winter - in the apartment in Ostersund, which she bought for the prize money for the winter season 2016/17 ^[9] .

• Skis: Fischer
• Boots: Alpina
• Ski poles: Swix

• The idol of Stina is the four-time Olympic champion Siksten Yernberg ^[1] :

I always liked to read about the history of skiing. But after I read the book about Sixten, he became a role model for me ... He was damn cruel to himself ... And the fact that he is from Lima is also very cool. I am from Malung and its forests - my forests. It is so close. I think what he was doing was very surprising.

• According to her bad habits, solving crosswords and long breakfasts ^[1] .
• Stina wants to write a cookbook someday ^[2] .
• In her refrigerator there is always mango, keso (granular cottage cheese) and caviar ^[2] .
• As a child, Stina went to school on a unicycle ^{[2] [3]} .
• He prefers to spend free time with family or friends, play video games or bake ^[3] .