Annika Helena Johansson (born March 4, 1967 in Örnsköldsvik , Västernorrlands län ) is a former Swedish freestyle skier . She specialized in the no longer performed discipline ballet (acro) . In this discipline she won three world championship bronze medals and three individual competitions in the World Cup. Since the end of her career, she has been an Associate Professor at Umeå University.
Annika Johansson made her debut in the Freestyle Skiing World Cup in March 1991 at the age of 23 . She achieved her first top result three weeks later with ninth place on Hundfjället. In her first full season she consistently ranked in the top ten and reached her first podium in January 1992 as third in Lake Placid . When demonstration competition at the Olympic Games of Albertville , she joined a program to modern pop music, finishing fifth. In the following winter she stayed in the top ranks and at the end of the season she finished third in the discipline ranking. At the world championships in Altenmarkt-Zauchensee , she just missed winning her first medal in fourth place.
In the next two years Johansson was fourth in the discipline classification. At the World Championships in La Clusaz , she won the bronze medal. In January 1996 she celebrated her first World Cup victory in Blackcomb . Thanks to two further victories in Kirchberg and Zauchensee, she only had to admit defeat to Russian Jelena Batalowa in the discipline classification . Then she reached a few podium placements and won two more bronze medals both at the World Championships in Japan and two years later in Meiringen - Hasliberg . She finished the very last Ballet World Cup in Ovindoli on her 33rd birthday in second place behind Jelena Batalowa.
Further career
From Ornskoldsvik native Johansson already studied during her athletic career at the University of Umea with a focus on sports education . In 2001 she got her licentiate with a thesis on the subject of reliability and validity of evaluation in the evaluation sports acroski and rhythmic gymnastics . After living in Reno , Nevada for some time , she returned to Umeå and obtained her PhD in 2010 with a thesis based on her licentiate topic.
Johansson is employed as an Associate Professor at the Pedagogical Institute of Umeå University and is involved in leadership and coaching as well as training in sports science. She also works as a mental trainer at the Umeå Police Academy and for the Swedish national freestyle team.
Acroski - en bedömningssport. Bedömningarnas tillförlitlighet och relevans. In: Pedagogiska mätningar , No. 138, Umeå University 1998 (Swedish).
Ar det alltid rätt person som vinner ?: bedömningarnas reliabilitet and validitet inom bedömningssporterna acroski och rytmisk gymnastik. In: Licentiatavhandlingar vid Pedagogiska institutions: Umeå universitet. Licentiate thesis at Umeå University 2001 (Swedish).
Selections to top-level sport teams. In: Pedagogiska rapporter från Pedagogiska institutionen. No. 83, Umeå University 2010, 121 pp. (English).
Behavior - a ground for selections to top level sport teams. In: People in Motion - Bridging the Local and Global: The 8th European Association for Sociology of Sport Conference. Umeå University 2011, p. 157 (English).
with Inger Eliasson: Organization and leadership changes reasons for teenage girls to drop to out from sport. In: Proceedings of the 20th annual Congress of the European College of Sport Science (ECSS), Sustainable Sport. Malmö 2015, pp. 1–2 (English).
with Josef Fahlén: Simply the best, better than all the rest ?: Validity issues in selections in elite sport. In: International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching. Sage Publications 2017, Vol. 12 (4), pp. 470-480 (English).
with Inger Eliasson: The Disengagement Process among young athletes when withdrawing from sport: A new research approach. In: International Review for the Sociology of Sport. Sage Publications 2020, pp. 1–21 (English).