Maja Dahlqvist, who last season won the World Cup Sprint Cup and took two silvers and a bronze in the Beijing Olympics, believes that it may become a trend that more and more people make their own pre-season plans.

- It's not the same skiing now as it was five years ago.

Development moves forward and you have to follow the development.

We don't train exactly the same as we did five years ago, she says.

In Norway, superstar Johannes Høsflot Klæbo runs his own system during the pre-season.

In Sweden, Anna Dyvik did this a year ago and now Linn Svahn, Frida Karlsson and Maja Dahlqvist are doing this for the coming season.

"Not disastrously bad"

It is one of the hottest days of the summer and Maja Dahlqvist is recovering between two training sessions at Lugnet in Falun.

In an environment she wants to be in. The everyday routine of exercising, eating and resting on her own works well.

- If I'm going to go and be with the team, I think you should do things better and optimize things.

I want to leave and feel that here I develop to one hundred percent as a skier and not just be at a camp because it's fun.

It will give me something.

It's not catastrophically bad to be on the team.

But we are doing so well at home.

"I don't feel like Judas"

TT: Have the friends in the national team and sponsors understood the decision?

- Yes.

I don't feel like Judas.

The group is great.

Both girls and boys.

What I now feel the most is towards all younger skiers.

I have always dreamed of being in the A team.

That is what you strive for.

So there are now three people who are not participating this year.

TT: Does the national team model of the future start from home?

- The work is done at home.

Some kind of model like that.

I think somewhere there is a way to go.

That's why I think you should make a national team that will be really exclusive.

It shouldn't be about getting money to go on the road.

It should be the best optimal environment for us to gather.

CUT: The departure of the stars from the national cross-country team

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Maja Dahlqvist, Frida Karlsson and Anders Byström.

Photo: Bildbyrån