There’s not much left for Anja Paerson to accomplish. She has won the World Cup overall twice (2004 and 2005), been the runner up once (2006) and finished third in the standings on three occasions (2010, 2009 and 2003). She has won six Olympic medals (in 2002, 2006 and 2010) and 11 world championship medals (2001, 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2011), seven of them gold. This season, she has been notably missing from several races so far and when she has raced, she hasn’t exactly been reaching her potential (her best result has been 16th in the Lake Louise super G).
“I’ve done this for 14, 15 years and I’ve done everything already,” Paerson said in Bad Kleinkirchheim last weekend, where she started off with a strong downhill run, leading on the top of the course and behind by just a couple of tenths before she missed a gate on the last half of the course and then went on to finish 27th in the super G. “Mentally, I feel I can’t be out 250 days a year and I can go home a bit. I have another life, besides. But it’s also my body. Doing four events for so many years, it took my body to a different level. I’m starting to feel it’s gaining on me.”
Thus, Paerson will focus primarily on the speed and combined races this season. She was planning on doing the giant slalom in Courchevel before it was canceled, and is planning on racing GS in Kranjska Gora, where the races originally scheduled for Maribor on 21-22 January will take place. The Bad Kleinkirchheim races were Paerson’s first since Beaver Creek, where she finished 33rd in the super G. She stayed in the U.S. and trained for a couple of days after that, then went home to Sweden where she was snowed in, then did a bit of training around New Year’s, but nothing ample enough to really prepare her for full downhill courses, she said.
“It’s been very tough to get long courses,” she said, adding that she could feel the BKK training runs in her legs. “Hopefully I’m going to get into the condition pretty quick.”
Paerson acknowledges that without racing all events and doing the training that comes with it, getting back to competitive form doesn’t come immediately but sheer love of the sport keeps her in it. She’s hoping that lightening up her competition load will allow her a few more years of racing.
“I’m a racer and I like to compete and it’s tough staying home when there’s a race on,” she says. “Hopefully this will maybe make me ski a few more years that I’m taking it a bit easy.”
And once back in better shape, Paerson aims to be back in the front of the pack.
“I love racing. But I don’t miss skiing bad and I don’t miss this fight every day,” she says. “But I love standing on the start and feeling competitive. That’s where I want to be. Now I have a bit of a struggle with my shape. But hopefully I’m going to come back and get a few more times on top of the podium.”
The World Cup tour arrives and one of Paerson’s favorite stops this weekend. She has raced in Cortina d’Ampezzo since 1999, and although she missed the races here last season due to illness, she has podiumed at the Italian resort seven times.
Hear what else Paerson has to say about her season in this video.
By Shauna Farnell
