Mogren suffers with doping suspected Fransson: "Incredibly tragic"

It was in the evening ahead of the final five mile at the 1989 Lahti World Cup that Mogren learned that he had been tested positive after the relay where Sweden took gold. He was driven by car from the World Cup village to the lab in Helsinki and tried to gather his thoughts while the world collapsed, which coincided with the best form he experienced in his career.

How do you think it can be so easy to get accused of a drug test?

- Just in the way it was handled, I think I had come out of it. There is no one who is so stupid in the head and in that case they found two different blood groups. Then I would have been sick if I sent it in. It had been understood that it could not have been right and he also took it and did this test before I could get down (from Lahti to Helsinki). No one can be so stupid to play Russian roulette in a doping situation, Mogren tells SVT Sport.

The lab had used an uncleaned test tube containing residue from another active's blood.

But if there were thoughts of corruption around the lab that perhaps did not want to stand with a bad reputation, can one imagine that they would rather have sacrificed an active?

- It is clear that you have thought about it. I did that when I sat there because I didn't know what it was either. I knew I had done nothing and that it was wrong. You feel so very powerless and then you have seen many who ended up in the same situation where I have questioned it myself and now I sat in the same situation and knew to 110 percent that I was clean. I was cut and felt very, very small.

Today, wrestler Jenny Fransson has about the same thoughts as you but is not acquitted. How do you think about it?

- Of course, I've been thinking about the same thing. It is a very job situation when you know that you are clean and that something has gone awry without my influence, not having any involvement in it. It feels incredibly tragic if that were to be the case, says Mogren.

SVT Sport has sought Fransson, who previously announced on social media:

"I know for myself that I did nothing wrong, but still punished in the worst way an athlete can be punished." So far Fransson.

How was the mood when you Mogren returned to the Swedish team after straightening out the wrong doping bat?

- There was no problem with the Swedish team. No one had any thoughts there. The worst thing was that when we went to Helsinki they said that the only people who knew about the information were us sitting in the car. But when I came back, the whole World Cup village knew about it, the rumor went off at once. It was very strange, it felt strange when you were preparing for the five miles the next day. I do not know how the information had gone out and how it really was.

In the midst of the nightmare, Mogren would then try to prepare for the five-mile, where he lost a lot in the beginning and was not even among the top 50 in the first interim.

- It wasn't true at all which you could understand, but the more miles you went the easier it went and you shook it off. In the end, things went very well in terms of what happened and I am more than happy.

You can look at it twice. If you did not happen to this event it could have been even better.

- Yes, I could have been tamped for the gold. I'm almost 100 sure, says Mogren, who finished second after Gunde Svan.

The biathlon legend Magdalena Forsberg participated in the World Cup in Lahti, then as a skier with the last name Wallin and shudders at the memory of Mogren's experience.

- I was in the Lahti and competed in the Ski World Cup. What a terrible event to be with. As an elite athlete, you are inadvertently afraid of getting anything through food or anything that could result in a doping control. You would, like, die and not cope with such an experience. He is thrown into that nightmare and manages to come back and perform which was incredible. It was terrible what he happened to be.

How was it communicated in Lahti's 1989?

- I can't remember exactly. With that, no big deal was made of it then and there.

Mogren avoided answering questions immediately after the finish, but referred to "personal reasons" and a poor recharge. The same evening, however, Expressen broke the news of the doping chaos, a story that was told regularly. Most recently in Channel 5's "Superstars" which is broadcast right now, where it was Mogren's day on Sunday.