Elvira Öberg was the biggest Swedish hope ahead of the World Championship before she fell ill and missed the last competition week ahead of the World Championship. She was second in the World Cup after five individual podiums this season, including two wins. Now she has dropped to third place.
She also missed training during the first loading week and was back only on Monday.
I was anyway sicker than I usually am when I get shorter colds and was bad for almost a week, says Öberg in a digital press conference from the training camp in Obertilliach in Austria.
I took it easy in the start of the training so that we didn't have any setbacks. I've avoided setbacks and I'm very happy about that.
Calm now
Despite the cold coming very inconveniently, she was quite calm.
But when I'd been sick for four-five days, I started feeling that now I really want to get healthy because the clock is ticking towards the World Championship, so then I had a few days when I was a bit more stressed.
Now that she's got going and trained, she feels calmer again. So to the question of whether she could have started in a World Championship race tomorrow, she answers:
Yes, I could have done that, I've managed to do a pretty hard session and my body responded well to it. I feel anyway that I'm fully back.
"An important session"
On Saturday, the entire national team will do a last hard training session. Then Elvira Öberg and also Sebastian Samuelsson, who has also been ill and trained on his own, will participate.
Of course, it's an important session, the last hard session before the World Championship. It becomes a bit extra important for me, a good check on how my form is, what speed I have in my body and how my recovery is compared to the others.
Even if the World Cup third place isn't sure that her World Championship form will be at the top on the first World Championship day, on Wednesday when there's a mixed relay on the program, she's happy to participate if she's selected.
For my part, to get a real workout and get to wear the bib number and get to go through my body properly, it would only be good ahead of the sprint, she says about the first individual race on February 14.
