Three winter sports retirements in one week

[zimena]

Perhaps I should have posted more about the other two, but I didn't. So, I'm just saying this today instead:

Winter sports has lost three of its greatest athletes in less than one week. I was more emotional than I thought I would be about Bjørndalen. Then, before I was even done processing that, Marit Bjørgen announced her retirement. Perhaps I wasn’t entirely unprepared for that, but it was still heartbreaking to me as a fan.

Emil’s retirement today, though? For me this is perhaps the hardest one to deal with, because I have always been his fan, throughout his career. He has always been my special boy at biathlon, he was the reason I cared about something during some tough and depressing times in my life where I basically just made it through days and weeks by focusing on when he would race next. He has always meant a lot to me, for more reasons than purely what he did on the track. In recent years, my love for him has probably been calmer and more quiet, but he always had a big place in my sports heart. And he always will have. Today I cried with him in front of my TV, just like I did that day in Östersund 2008 when he beat Bjørndalen on the home stretch for his first World Championship title on the senior level. Different kinds of tears, but still such a strong manifestation of feelings and love.

Thank you, Emil. A little piece of my heart will be yours, forever.

Comments

[nineveh_uk]

There's a real end of an era feeling to it. I am less familiar with Svendsen, because I'm less into biathlon, and it came as a real surprise to see that he was retiring. I know what you mean about sportspeople meaning more to you than just their track achievements. Those things that they achieve are bound up with what was happening in our lives at the time, and when they end their career then it is drawing a line under something in our lives, too, a move from present to past, and what replaces it?

(In other news, I see that Petter Northug is planning to release a book. Oh Petter, no!)