After 14 World Cup golds and four Olympic golds, Therese Johaug chose to stop cross-country skiing at the elite level this spring.

Now the 34-year-old has summarized his career in the autobiography "The Whole History".

There she talks for the first time about the weight problems she struggled with.

She describes an event that occurred just months before the home WC in Holmenkollen in 2011. Johaug had just finished third in a World Cup race and the then national team coach Egil Kristiansen visited her in the hotel room.

"He didn't come to congratulate.

Egil came for a serious talk.

Over the past year I had lost weight, quite a lot.

He knew it.

I knew that and we had talked about it before," writes Johaug in the book.

Since the WC in Sapporo in 2009, the Norwegian had lost ten percent of her body weight.

In the hotel room, she received an ultimatum from the coach.

"Could have gone a long way"

“I had become too thin.

If I didn't sharpen up, I could be denied skiing for the rest of the winter.”

Thanks to help from psychologists and nutrition specialists, Johaug managed to get the weight under control, but she says in an interview with VG that it could have had major consequences if she hadn't succeeded.

- If I hadn't had those people around me, then it could have gone a long way.

Maybe I'd never come back to the start - maybe.

Or that it had taken much longer or that I had not achieved my achievements.

The back of the gold medal

Before the WC in Holmenkollen, Johaug traveled home to his parents' home in Dalsbygda.

She was encouraged to eat as much as possible, she describes it as a "fat cure".

Johaug managed to overcome the weight, she had to compete - and won two golds in Holmenkollen, one in the relay and one in the three-mile.

But she calls the challenge posed by the weight problems "the flip side of the gold medal".

"For me it went well, but unfortunately it doesn't for everyone.

Later, I have seen cases both in the national team and in other environments where, in my opinion, the support around certain athletes has failed, in any case, they have not received as good follow-up as I received," writes Johaug.