We have just come back from the Swedish cycling show (Svenska Sportmässan) in Jönköping; we were lucky enough to have one of Sweden’s top triathletes, Joel Vikner helping out at our stand. It was a real privilege to spend a couple of days with Joel, because as well as being an all-round super nice guy, he also had a good line in training stories that could make your ears bleed, when you realise just what it takes to get to the top of the sport. He told me that he had done a ‘hard’ early morning at the pool a while back, which was 10 sets of 1500m, each set starting at 20 minute intervals. And then going to University for a day of lectures. Ouch!
Anyway, Sweden was a great country to spend some time in: scarily efficient and well-run and just generally deeply civilised. It is great news for out company that we are starting to get stream of business from Swedish cycling and triathlon clubs and a lot of the people we spoke to at the show were very receptive to the idea of buying from us direct from Portugal. We continue to sponsor Sweden’s top male triathlete, Per Wangel, which shows our commitment to growing our brand in Sweden and we hope to be out in Sweden again in 2013 to have a presence at one of the major triathlon events.
Joel was also good enough to share some of his thoughts on triathlon at a talk at the show, pictured above. I couldn’t understand a word he was saying, but he was no doubt terrifying his audience with stories from his training regime. Thanks so much to him for helping us out and we really look forward to going back to Sweden as soon as possible!