From an adventure racing perspective, that means you can pick exactly the course you want for a race. Teams won't have to stay on marked trails and you can pick the route with the most spectacular scenery, provided it's safe, he says. And that's not all. Map-reading skills are taught in comprehensive school and orienteering contests have been very popular for years. Skiing, hiking and biking are more or less a national pastimes.
Swedish people are always a little bit of both.
And while Mats, his brother Bj rn and friend and collegue Michael Lemmel have been able to call themselves professional adventure racers for four years, several more teams are working their way up the ranks. I think we will see many more Nordic teams do really well, too. I'd say there are many similarities between the Nordic folks and New Zealanders, both in that we have this outdoorsy lifestyle and we race in a relaxed way, putting as much emphasis on 'adventure' as on 'race' - and New Zealanders are some of the best adventure racers in the world. The climate is also an issue. It's a whole lot harder to train for adventure racing here than in California, for example.