Name: Michael Johansson
Country: Sweden
Born: 1st April 1965
Discipline: Trail Orienteering
World Championships: 2014, gold
individual Paralympic class, silver team medal; 2013, gold team
medal; 2009, silver team medal. European Championships: 2014,
gold individual Paralympic class, silver team medal; 2012, silver
individual Paralympic class, gold team medal; 2010, silver individual
Paralympic class, gold Paralympic team medal.
Fifty years of age this year, Michael
has been orienteering since the age of 10. He was born in Vänersborg
and has lived in nearby Trollhätten since 1990. He is an active
member of Vänersborg Ski Club, which is as devoted to orienteering
as to skiing. “In my youth I won races on occasions”, he says;
almost throughout his orienteering life he has been keen to plan
courses for others. Michael spends several hours a week on footO and
trailO work in his club and district, and this work has included
course planning and controlling up to national competition and Elite
Series standard. In 2011 he was one of four organisers for the
Swedish Relay and TrailO Championships, and as part of that work he
was organiser and course planner for three competitions.
Accident in Vasaloppet
But let us go back seven years: an
active ski and mountain-bike enthusiast, Michael entered Vasaloppet,
the famous 90 km ski race between Sälen and Mora in Dalarna county,
Sweden. A high-speed crash left him with a badly damaged hip and
pelvis, which required two operations and a year’s intense
rehabilitation before he could begin to walk properly again; 7½
months went by before he could walk even one step without support.
Very slowly he started taking more exercise – walking, swimming,
some cycling – but the orienteering he was used to was out of the
question.
“But I thought about trail
orienteering, which I’d only tried a few times a year in the
A-class before, then with some good results. I now wanted to try
trailO again and see how good I could be. With the interest and
experience I had in maps, it would hopefully be possible to succeed
in this new discipline, I thought.” Aiming towards being an elite
trail orienteer and future medal success began on crutches in the
summer of 2007.
Changed life-style
“With these and other thoughts,”
tells Michael, “I used my rehabilitation year to write a book that
I called ‘Off Track’. Here I set down my experience of this
completely changed life-style, the moments of joy and those of
sorrow; the reality of life, the way I think about things and how I
adjusted to a new life-style that will last for the rest of my days.”
The book was printed in two editions with 500 copies in all.
He also had to adjust to a new working
environment in his job connected with asphalt laying and associated
ground work. “When I injured myself I had to give up driving
completely for a few months, and sat in the office all the time.
Today I have the same job but with more indoor work than before my
injury, and I have a height-adjustable desk.” He is very busy,
often with overtime, from April to November but working life is
quieter in the winter. His job now includes a lot of executive tasks
– planning projects, writing tenders, hiring staff, directing work
in the field, billing customers etc. – a large work area that again
now involves a lot of driving.
Training for trailO
Apart from orienteering, Michael’s
hobbies are bandy (“a sport like football but on ice with a stick
and a small ball”, that he himself has played), watching sport on
TV and “doing a bit around the house”. But back to the
orienteering. “I usually take on tasks a few times a year as course
planner and controller in foot orienteering and trailO,” says
Michael. “However I need more time to complete tasks than before
the injury.”
Training for trailO is now a very
important activity too. “I have this feeling for fine detail when
I’m reading maps,” he says. “I like training in the detail-rich
terrain in my area, with many maps and different terrain types; I use
blown-up maps similar to the ones used in trailO competitions.” He
also studies maps at home, and uses the Italian trailO website where
you can train for TempO through a simulation program.
The right preparation for a competition
is all-important. “I get a lot of pain and stiffness, depending on
how far I go or how long I stand or sit still, because there is
cartilage in the injured area and the joint surfaces are not as
smooth as they were before. So before competitions I must prepare
myself so as to optimise my ability to focus on orienteering and
reduce the distractions of the pain and stiffness.” He prefers the
traditional form of trailO, PreO, to the more time-challenging TempO;
“It probably depends on relative success, but also because PreO
takes longer and is more similar to my experiences with maps in foot
orienteering,” he says. “During my almost 8 years in the sport,
PreO has evolved and there are now better and more enjoyable courses,
and this trend is continuing.”
New horizons
Michael has a positive outlook on life
as it now has to be lived. “I welcome what is happening; you cannot
reverse the tape, you can only affect the future,” says Michael. “I
now visit new countries in Europe and meet many nice people, things
which would not have happened if I hadn’t hurt myself in 2007.
Looking again at the positive side, it has now given me several
medals, this year two individual golds. It’s great to take two gold
medals in the same year! I liked the courses and had built up my
confidence, so I felt I had a good chance of reaching the top – if
I didn’t I think this diminishes the chances. It was then that I
hoped it might be luck and skill in combination.”
“People have asked me what I now have
as a target? My goal is to win more golds! It will not be easy, but
not harder either when I have already proved to myself and others
that it could be done last year. I feel strengthened for this year,
especially as some competitions, including the World Championships in
Croatia, offer the prospect of good terrain with decisive courses. I
will train and prepare myself like I did for last season. The goal is
to evolve so I get to a higher minimum level.”
Another goal for Michael is to help get
more quality planning in trail orienteering through assisting with
course planning education and the implementation of new ideas in
trailO. He believes that the current debate in trailO about ‘zero
tolerance’ – the margin to be allowed so that a ‘false’
control (no kite at the point indicated on the map) is fair –
should resolve itself with more education and the avoidance of
certain kinds of control site planning.
Athletes’ questions
The Athlete of January, Russian ski
orienteer Andrey Lamov, asks: What’s the most challenging thing
about trailO?
Michael’s answer: “Every
competition is different, and everyone is competing against each
other regardless of age and sex, which means you have the chance of
winning at a higher age compared to a sport where youngsters normally
win (or vice versa).”
Rosy future
Michael believes there is a rosy future
for trail orienteering: “especially in TempO, it should be possible
to make the sport more interesting to audiences with the help of
television and some new technologies. The public can get everything
one could wish for in terms of excitement and nervous anticipation.”
All four disciplines in orienteering have what it takes for
competition at Olympic level, he believes.
He is clearly determined to play an
active part in creating more and better trail orienteering. His
current project is controlling three of the five trailO courses to be
used at the Swedish O-Ringen at Borås this year. “I have been
working on the trailO for O-Ringen for two years now,” he says,
“helping with planning the use of the five areas and with the
training of officials. I promise there will be varied and fine
orienteering in Borås, hopefully regarded as one of the best PreO
O-Ringens when it’s over.”
Text: Clive Allen;
Photo: Joaquim Margarido
[See the original article at
http://orienteering.org/skiing-accident-resulted-in-a-new-career-and-world-champion-title-in-trail-orienteering/.
Published with permission from the International Orienteering
Federation]
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