It’s gonna be freaking hard!

This past winter, the 25-year-old from Asker won the overall Tour de Ski and the overall World Cup, and was on the World Cup podium ten times. Two weeks ago, he won the 15-kilometer race at the Blink Festival in Sandnes, where he also grabbed one of the intermediate sprints. 

Now, he's ready for the Toppidrettsveka, where he'll face almost all of the World Cup elite, and take a final look at the courses that will be used for the World Championships in just a few months.

Madshus caught up with Harald Østberg Amundsen heading into the four-day race week. 

Before, you could fly a bit under the radar, but now you’ve become the gold standard, and the guy everyone wants to beat. How do you think it will feel to enter competitions now, as the overall World Cup winner, with everyone watching you even more closely and wanting to beat you?
"It doesn’t really affect me, but it probably affects others. There's definitely a difference, and I noticed it a lot during Blink. I get a lot more respect in the field now than I used to, and that's generally positive. It makes it much easier to avoid trouble," Østberg Amundsen told Langrenn.com.

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It’s gonna be freaking hard!
Even though the 25-year-old from Asker enjoys more respect in the field after his winter achievements, he's not expecting any special treatment when the team for the World Championships in Trondheim is picked.

"It's going to be really tough to make it into the Norwegian World Championships team early," Østberg Amundsen says, pointing out that recent top-level results are what really matter.

However, as the overall World Cup winner from this past winter, he has a small ace up his sleeve: He has a guaranteed spot in all World Cup races up until the Tour de Ski. He plans to take full advantage of that.

"It’s going to be so tough to qualify for that World Championship team that there are only very few racers who can just mark their calendars for the end of February and wait for the World Championships to begin. You have to race all the World Cups and ski races from the start," Østberg Amundsen explains. 

"But if you've delivered at the top level for a while, and after the Tour de Ski, you get the green light to race some events at the World Championships, then maybe you can skip a World Cup weekend to be as prepared as possible for Trondheim."

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Which events do you most want to compete in at the World Championships?
"In a perfect world, I’d race in everything. I'll be honest about that," he says, and continues:

"The best chance I have is probably in the skiathlon and the 50-kilometer race, which are both in skating. But I really want to do the 10-kilometer classic and the skating sprint too."

Is that realistic?
"I’ve improved in classic skiing, and I showed this winter that I can go fast in sprinting too. I was on the podium in the skating sprint at the test World Championships in Trondheim. So, we’ll see," he says, adding:

"I have expectations of myself to build on last year’s performances and ski even faster at the World Championships in Trondheim this winter."

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How has your summer been? You hinted that you were going to train really hard…?
"That’s exactly what I’ve done," says Østberg Amundsen, and elaborates:

"I got a bit of a late start because of illness in May and June. But July was really good. I trained a lot, and exactly as I had planned. Now I feel like I’m in a really good training rhythm. So, I hope to keep that going until the season."

Are you doing anything different in your training this year to improve even more?
"A lot of the training is the same as last year. The season went so well that I don't see any reason to change much. But I’m always trying to challenge myself, so I’m training a bit more this year than in previous seasons. I notice that I can handle more training as I get older and more experienced."

Specifically, how much are you training now, and how does it compare to before?
"It’s hard to compare directly from year to year because many things come into play. For example, last year I had an illness period in July; this year, I didn’t. But this year, I trained close to 130 hours in July, and that’s the most I’ve ever trained," said Harald Østberg Amundsen.