Language & culture
Notes from ‘Sverigeloppet’ by Li Kronestedt Lundevall
(10 min.). These were positioned so that they marked thirds of the stage so that, for example, after the lunch stop you knew you had two-thirds left. Our team added two short stops per stage because they drank so much liquid that they needed ‘to powder their noses’ and exchange their empty water bottles for new ones; these they had prepared the evening before – with lots of energy powder added. To avoid losing too much time, the intention was to limit these stops to about two minutes. After the start in Haparanda we spent the nights in the towns of Piteå, Umeå, Sundsvall, Sandviken, Vingåker and Värnamo, before finishing in Ystad.
The annual competitive bicycle ride Sverigeloppet took place from 6 to 12 August in 2021. It consists of seven stages, with an average of 267 km per stage; in total the ride is 1867 km. Rebecca Chudi and I, daughters of two of the ten members of Fredrikshof Team Renault, had driven the support car with their bikes from Stockholm, while the cyclists had taken a flight. We met them outside the city hotel in Haparanda and found a nervous atmosphere among them, as they were eagerly waiting to nurse their bikes before the start of the ride the following day. In the evening, the officials held an introductory meeting for the four participating teams: Fredrikshof Team Renault, Team Assa Abloy, Team Wilier SWE and Team Scapa. After the meeting and dinner, each team had their own meeting on tactics for the following day. Our team discussed how to ride in the cluster, how to take the demanding front position in turn (the last one in the line of bikes experiences least air resistance), and they settled on trying to keep an average of 31 km/h throughout the ride. Each stage had two mandatory stops, one for lunch (20 min.) and one for coffee
The first stage was 249 km, with 1781 altitude metres. The forests were fabulous and the weather magnificent. At the finish line in Piteå, at Pite Havsbad (‘the Riviera of the North’), there were many smiles among all the teams and officials. The ride, for which they all had been waiting for so long, was underway! 23
