As usual, Nils van der Poel chooses to go his own way.
After double World Cup gold and a world record, he puts his skates on the shelf - again.
The next few months are about anything but skating for the 24-year-old world champion.
Skiing in Åre and Duved, parachuting in Västerås, skimo and ultramarathon.
And then cycle 203.7 km from Riksgränsen to Smygehuk.
The idea is to run the distance in a record time of around 82 hours (!).
- He's training like hell.
It is completely extreme, there is no one who trains like him.
And he goes his own way a lot, he does not do like everyone else.
I think it's cool, says Joel Eriksson, the national captain for Swedish skating.
Explore yourself
What drives van der Poel is an inner striving to explore himself and his motives.
- As an athlete, you can only be sure that you will not win gold.
There is only one in the world who does it, everyone else will fail.
And that is the premise you have when you start your venture, he says.
He does the interview during a training session.
While talking on the phone, he presses in the track.
The answers are alternated with panting and pauses for steep sections.
- You must realize that the goal in your sports investment can not be your placement and your results.
There is no point in taking 25 left turns on a skating rink.
There must be something more, he says.
Training in southern Germany
Only until August is it time to put on the skates again.
Then it is thought that he will train in Inzell in southern Germany.
The arena is located 690 meters above sea level.
About 80 world records have been set here, most of them before it even became an indoor arena.
After the success in the WC, van der Poel is seen as one of the great Swedish Olympic jumpers.
It is in Inzell that he will refine the form that is supposed to take him all the way to the Olympics in Beijing.
There are two ways to qualify.
Either through the 10,000-meter cup which consists of a single race (!), Or via a points system where you combine the results for 5,000 and 10,000 meters from four competitions.
- As the level is now, it looks like I could qualify via both systems.
So there should be no strangeness, says van der Poel.
CLIP: The tearful meeting for van der Poel (February 16, 2021)
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The tearful meeting for van der Poel