There are athletes who define a sport. And then there are athletes who, when they stop competing, you wonder what possible role they could ever fill that would match what they did on the start line.
Marit Bjørgen is one of those athletes. Fifteen Olympic medals. Eighteen World Championship golds. Numbers that don’t quite make sense when you try to hold them in your head. She retired from competition in 2018, and for a while the question hung in the air: what does someone like that do next?
As of this week, we have a clearer answer. Bjørgen has expanded her agreement with the Norwegian Ski Federation, going from a 50 per cent commitment to a full-time role on the women’s national team. The most decorated Winter Olympian in history is now all-in as a coach — and with the World Championships in Falun less than a year away, the timing matters.
From 50% to All-In
She joined the coaching setup in spring 2024, initially in a part-time capacity alongside head coach Sjur Ole Svarstad and Pål Gunnar Mikkelsplass. That arrangement worked well enough through an Olympic season, but something had to give as the squad builds toward Falun 2027.
Mikkelsplass confirmed earlier this week that he won’t be continuing. Svarstad stays. And Bjørgen, apparently, decided she wanted more — not less.
“I feel very motivated and I feel impatient to get started,” she told VG.
That quote is worth sitting with for a second. Impatient. From an athlete who has spent her career under the most intense pressure a Norwegian skier can face, who knows exactly what it means to stand at a start line in January when a nation expects you to win — and she’s impatient. She wants to be in it.
The World Championships Are Coming
The 2026/2027 season is not an ordinary year. The FIS World Championships in Falun, Sweden, are the centrepiece — a venue with deep Nordic history, and a race that matters enormously to anyone who grew up watching Scandinavian cross-country.
Let’s be real: Norwegian cross-country is not a programme that does things in half-measures. Every year is important. Every World Cup race gets scrutinised. But a World Championship year, in Falun specifically, carries extra weight. The atmosphere there is different. The crowds are enormous. The history is palpable in a way that even other marquee venues don’t quite replicate.
Building a coaching team around that goal makes sense. Having Bjørgen — who has won in Falun before, who knows what it takes to stand on that podium — running with a full-time commitment rather than a part-time one makes even more sense.
The Team Selection Drama
It hasn’t all been straightforward. VG reported this week that three women athletes have declined places on the national team — a situation that’s generated some noise in Norwegian ski circles. Bjørgen was careful in her response, noting that the landslagsavtale (national team agreement) is a matter for team leadership rather than the coaching staff directly.
But she did say this: “If we can gather the best together, we develop together. We have girls with different qualities and strengths and I think we can lift each other as a team.”
That’s a coach’s answer. Not defensive, not dismissive — just a clear statement of what she believes good team environments produce. The irony is not lost: Bjørgen spent twenty years being the best, in a programme where being the best was the standard. She knows, perhaps better than anyone, what it feels like to be part of something that demands everything from you. And she believes it’s worth it.
What This Means for Norwegian Women’s Cross-Country
Norwegian women’s cross-country has had a complicated few years. The generation after Bjørgen and Marit Weng and Therese Johaug has taken time to find its shape. Talent is there — Astrid Øyre Slind, Kristine Stavås Skistad on the sprint side, younger names developing. But the kind of dominant team depth that made Norway untouchable for a decade is still being rebuilt.
Bjørgen’s presence isn’t magic. It doesn’t automatically solve anything. But there’s something to be said for having someone who has been there — who has won in exactly the races that will matter next winter — standing in the wax cabin, on the sideline, in the debrief room. Athletes learn from what they see as much as what they’re told. And what Bjørgen has done is not something that can be described or diagrammed. It has to be felt.
Svarstad put it well: “She is an important resource for me and the athletes, and that she is joining fully into an exciting World Championship season is good news.”
An understatement, perhaps. But that’s often how the best Norwegian coaches talk.
A Long Off-Season Just Got More Interesting
The skis are put away now. The season is over. For most of us, it’s time to switch to hiking boots and wait for October to come around again.
But this summer, there’s a coaching setup in Norwegian cross-country worth paying attention to. A new landslagssjef in Per Elias Kalfoss, confirmed through the 2030 Olympics. A head coach in Svarstad who has navigated some genuinely turbulent waters. And now Bjørgen, full-time, building something.
Falun in 2027 is a long way off. But it’s also closer than it looks.
Are you following how the Norwegian women’s cross-country team shapes up for next season? Who do you think steps up in a World Championship year? Drop a comment below — I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Source: Bjørgen fortsetter – utvider avtalen med Norges Skiforbund — VG
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