Niklas Edin Chasing Gold in Curling, While He Still Can


Niklas Edin is one of the most ornate tongs on the planet. At his home in Karlstad, Sweden, most of his plaques and trophies simply take up space.

“It’s full of clothes,” said Edin, who has won five world titles, including the last three.

Her two Olympic medals — a bronze from 2014 and a silver from 2018 — occupy a more prominent real estate space in a glass cabinet. Edin, 36, is of course proud of them.

“But we’re still missing out on gold,” he said in an interview in January. “So I guess that puts extra pressure on you because you don’t have much of a chance with these.”

At the Beijing Olympics, Edin is ignited by a sense of urgency, even though she knows it won’t be easy. lead your four-man team to the top of the podium. Curling, the sport of ice played with brooms and large granite stones, has grown in popularity since the 2018 Games. Sweden lost to the USA At the gold medal final in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

Beyond facing a developed field, Edin understands the bitter truth of his conditions – his limbs seem to be held together by chicken wire and masking tape. He’s had 10 surgeries since he was a teenager: four on his back, two on his right elbow, two on his left knee, one on his left shoulder, and one last year. procedure on the right ankle it still bothers him.

“I might have to do this again,” he said.

In Beijing, Edin led the Swedish team to a 6-0 record in the robin game with three games left in Thursday’s semi-finals.

Many curlers can compete at a premium level for a long time. Jumping Jennifer Jones canada women’s team He is 47 years old, who won Olympic gold in 2014. The situation is different for Edin, whose dream can be destroyed tomorrow. It’s a minor medical miracle that she continues to compete for medals.

“He’s a great guy with an interesting perspective,” said Marc Kennedy, alternative to the Canadian men’s team. “His body is in shambles.”

Raised on a dairy farm in Ornskoldsvik, Sweden, about 300 miles north of Stockholm, four-time Olympian Edin had never heard of curling until the Swedish women won bronze at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Even so, Edin, who was 12 at the time, did not succumb to the curling craze. She was busy playing tennis, soccer, and ice hockey. She wasn’t particularly interested when her mother told her that a local circuit was holding a curling show—until she hired her three best friends from school to check it out.

“I was like, ‘Wow, mom, you’re so embarrassing,'” Edin said. “I basically had no choice but to go with them.”

Edin had proven at the age of 16 that he was talented enough in sports to earn a place in a sports academy. He was a young 18-year-old world champion, but he didn’t exactly ride a rocket ship for fame and fortune. Curling as an income-generating sport was in its infancy and for several years he made a living by doing odd jobs. He took the moonlight as an ice maker. He taught children how to curl.

“I was trying to make enough money to pay the rent,” he said. “But I kept playing because I thought one day we would be good enough to try it professionally.”

Before long, Edin and his teammates were elitist enough to catch everyone’s attention. Swedish Olympic CommitteeThis has helped subsidize their costs so they can play and train full-time, he said.

In the midst of her ascension, Edin learned to deal with chronic injuries. Talking about bad luck with genetics, Edin started having back problems when he was younger. She had a herniated disc at the age of 14, which lasted for about a year and a half with a burning pain in one of her legs that limited her mobility.

“I couldn’t really walk or stand up straight,” she said. “I always lean in one direction.”

He said most of his other injuries—elbow, ankle, shoulder—probably resulted from years of hard training. this should be noted curling can be punishing the body. No, really: Ask the curlers how far all that sweep is on their backs and shoulders, or how they bend their knees every time they squat to make a shot. Rasmus Wrana, one of Edin’s teammates, had surgery on his left knee in 2017.

“It’s one of those sports that puts a lot of tension on certain parts of the body,” Wrana said.

Edin, who works to protect his career, weight lifting and have chipped structure of a free securityshe’s still worried about her waist.

“It’s fine most days,” he said, “but then it can come on suddenly.”

This was the case at the world championships in 2012 when Edin had to be drugged and taken to the hospital for emergency surgery.

“I didn’t even know what was going on until you woke me up and said, ‘Well, we had to remove part of your disk,’” she recalls. “That was extreme.”

Edin faced a different challenge at the 2018 Olympics, where Sweden ranked #1 in the world and crushed Switzerland to arrange a meeting with the underdog United States team in the final. There Sweden gained an early advantage before minor mistakes started to pile up. The United States, led by John Shuster, led such a great Sweden accepted the match with a few rocks to play with.

“They had nothing to lose,” Edin said. “We had everything to lose.”

It was a loss that bothered the Swedes and haunted them for years. But less than two months later, they won another world title. The victory, in its own way, was the start of a new Olympic cycle, and Edin has kept an eye on Beijing ever since. For a small sport like curling that would otherwise not benefit from mainstream attention, the Olympics mean a lot.

“Everything should be in place,” Edin said, “or you probably won’t be performing at the absolute maximum.”

He said that these days he completes his training by playing billiards which helps him sharpen his mental focus. He admires Ronnie O’Sullivan, one of the best pool players in the world.

“I was very impressed with how he was able to maintain such extreme concentration,” Edin said. “Curling is similar in that respect. If you have a math test at school and another one right after it and you have to do it every day for eight days in a row – that’s the Olympics.”

Edin knows all about testing so far, after years of injury-free wins. In Beijing, he hopes to succeed in his most important assignment yet.





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