Mats Larsson

Mats Larsson
Mats Larsson (2007)
Full name	Ål Mats Arne Larsson
nation	Sweden
birthday	20th March 1980 (age 40)
place of birth	Järna , Sweden
size	184 cm
Weight	75 kg
Career
society	Åsarna IK
Trainer	Hans-Christer Holmberg
status	resigned
End of career	2011
Medal table
Olympic medals 0 × 0 × 1 × World Cup medals 0 × 1 × 0 × JWM medals 0 × 1 × 0 × NM medals 1 × 2 × 5 ×
winter Olympics bronze 2006 Turin Season  Nordic World Ski Championships silver 2007 Sapporo sprint  Nordic Junior Ski World Championships silver 2000 Štrbské Pleso Season  Swedish championships bronze 2003 Nässjö 10 km freestyle bronze 2003 Nässjö 10 km pursuit bronze 2004 Skellefteå 30 km mass start bronze 2005 Hudiksvall 15 km freestyle silver 2006 Luleå / Boden 50 km mass start bronze 2006 Luleå / Boden 15 km classic gold 2009 Sundsvall sprint silver 2010 Piteå sprint
Placements in the cross-country skiing world cup
Debut in the World Cup November 27, 1999  World Cup victories in the team 1 ( details )  Overall World Cup 25th ( 2006/07 )  Sprint World Cup 11th ( 2006/07 )  Tour de Ski 29th ( 2007/08 )
Podium placements 1. 2. 3.  Sprint races 0 1 2  Season 1 0 3  Team sprint 0 3 1

Ål Mats Arne Larsson (born March 20, 1980 in Järna ) is a former Swedish cross-country skier .

Career

Mats Larsson comes from a cross-country skiing family . His father Gunnar "Hulån" Larsson won the bronze medal over the 15 kilometers and the silver medal with the relay at the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble . Like his siblings Carina and Tommy, he was trained at a young age by his mother Karin and father Gunnar.

On November 27, 1999 Larsson started in Kiruna, Sweden, in the national group for the first time in a World Cup competition . He finished 50th out of a field of 83 athletes. At the Junior World Championships in 2000 in Štrbské Pleso , he just missed the podium over the 10 kilometer freestyle in the victory of German Ron Spanuth in fourth, but was runner-up in the Swedish relay over 4 × 10 kilometers. From the 2001/02 season Larsson was a permanent member of the Swedish World Cup team. But it wasn't until December 21, 2002 in Ramsau that he succeeded in gaining his first World Cup points. With tenth place in the pursuit competition, he clearly exceeded his achievements up to then.

In the following years, Larsson , who lives in Östersund , was able to further improve his performance, especially in sprint competitions. With fourth place in the sprint in Reit im Winkl shortly before the Nordic World Ski Championships in 2005, he qualified for the Swedish national team and started at the World Championships in Oberstdorf. There he reached the B-final in the sprint, which was carried out in the classic technique, and took sixth place in the final result. With the Swedish relay he was seventh. The Swedish team was able to significantly improve this result at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin . Larsson, who started as the starting runner of the relay, won the bronze medal with the Swedish team and thus his first international medal.

In the 2006/07 season Larsson, who is supported by the mental trainer Rune Gustafsson, finally made his breakthrough to the top of the world. At the Nordic World Ski Championships in 2007 in Sapporo , Japan , he reached the finals of the sprint competition and won the silver medal behind Jens Arne Svartedal . Furthermore, he managed to achieve a podium finish in the World Cup twice. In the overall ranking of the Sprint World Cup, he finished eleventh at the end of the season. Also in the 2007/08 season Larsson was able to book further top ten placements. He came third in the sprint in Kuusamo , fifth in the prologue of the Tour de Ski and achieved fourth place in the classic 15-kilometer Tour de Ski race. At the end of the season, however, his performance decreased, so that he could not improve the result of the previous year in the overall World Cup.

In the 2008/09 season his performance continued to decline, so that after a short time he left the World Cup squad and started again at FIS races . At the Swedish Championships in Sundsvall in 2009 , he secured his first and only national sprint title. Shortly afterwards he started the team sprint at the Nordic World Ski Championships 2009 in Liberec and ran together with Emil Jönsson in sixth place.

In the World Cup he could not gain a foothold in the following two years. After the 2010/11 season he ended his active cross-country skiing career. He had previously won silver in the sprint at the 2010 Swedish Championships in Piteå .

successes

World Cup victories in the team

No.	date	place	discipline
1.	November 21, 2010	Gällivare	4 × 10 km relay 1

¹With Johan Olsson , Daniel Richardsson and Marcus Hellner .

Victories in Continental Cup races

No.	date	place	discipline	series
1.	February 7, 2002	Val di Fiemme	2 × 7.5 km skiathlon	Continental Cup

World Cup Statistics

The table shows the placements achieved in detail.

• 1st – 3rd place: Number of podium placements
• Top 10: Number of places in the top ten
• Points ranks: Number of placements within the point ranks
• Starts: Number of races run in the respective discipline
• Note: In the distance races, the classification is based on the FIS.

placement	Distance races a					Skiathlon pursuit	sprint	Stage race b	total	Team c
	≤ 5 km	≤ 10 km	≤ 15 km	≤ 30 km	> 30 km					sprint	Season
1st place											1
2nd place							1		1	3
3rd place							2		2	1	3
Top 10			1			1	11		13	4th	12
Scoring			11		1	6th	20th	2	40	4th	16
Starts		4th	22nd	4th	1	8th	25th	3	67	4th	16
Status: end of career

^a including individual starts and mass starts according to FIS classification

^bEntire race, not individual stages, e.g. B. Tour de Ski, Nordic Opening, season finale

^c Possibly incomplete due to a lack of suitable sources before 2001

Web links

Commons : Mats Larsson  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Mats Larsson in the database of the International Ski Federation (English)
• Mats Larsson in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Official website of Mats Larsson (Norwegian)