Two months after Maren Lundby said a tearful goodbye to show jumping, she has decided where she will go next. An engaged Lundby tells news. – It’s exciting and challenging, but at the same time a bit scary with new things. I am completely new to working life! JUMPING STARS: Maren Lundby won eight medals in the WC and Olympics. Here with the latest after the WC silver last year. Photo: Heiko Junge / NTB It is the private school Wang Toppidrett that has given the “peach” responsibility for a completely new project. The title is “Girls, focus and development” where the aim is to find reasons why Norwegian female athletes have fewer top places than men in international competitions. – It is a large and challenging project. It can be about everything from the way of training, whether more female trainers should be employed and recruited, or how to communicate to girls versus boys, says Lundby. Wang has 3,600 students and 390 coaches in 36 sports, which are distributed among 15 junior and senior high schools around the country. Lundby will not be permanently stationed at one of the schools, nor much in the classroom. – After all, I will first and foremost obtain information for the project via external people and environments, not least from research environments, she says. – I’ll probably come around a bit to see how the teaching goes, but it’s probably good that I stay away from the classroom, laughs Lundby. – A leadership talent in Norwegian sports The management at Wang contacted Lundby in the new year. They had several relevant candidates for the job, but feel they have hit the spot when Lundby, after some consideration, chose to accept. – We feel that we have picked up a future leadership talent in Norwegian sports, says top sports manager Håvard Johansen at Wang. TOP SPORTS MANAGER: Håvard Johansen. Photo: Wang Toppidrett He highlights several things that make Lundby qualified for the job: both her experience as an athlete, but also her openness about the weight challenges in the last years of her career. Johansen believes that Lundby throughout his top sports career has spoken his mind and worked for change. – After all, we have a goal of identifying which attitude or practice changes are necessary for Norwegian women to perform at the highest level, says Johansen. – We want to take our share of responsibility for creating lasting changes. It is indeed a paradox considering where Norway is as a nation, how egalitarian the society is and that fewer international medals are won on the women’s side relatively compared to men. Johansen emphasizes that Lundby also has relevant education in sports science with specialization in health and exercise physiology. ROUTINE: Maren Lundby has a long career behind her as a ski jumper. Here from training at Lillehammer in December 2022. Photo: Camilla Alexandrea Lie / news Will not become a national team coach – for now, Lundby says she has received several job offers after she quit, but she does not want to say what kind of offers they have been other than that most of it has been related to sports. She says that a coaching job in the show jumping team is currently not relevant. – We haven’t had any dialogue about a specific job, but the reason for that is probably that I said quite early on that I wanted to try something new. I think it’s healthy. Now I have been in show jumping for quite some time and know a lot about how things work there. Then it’s good to gain more experience and try something else, says Lundby. Training has been a large part of Maren Lundby’s everyday life. Now the days will be quite different, even though she will keep in close contact with the sports community. Photo: Aleksandr Nedbaev / news She formally starts her job at Wang already on Monday 12 February. She expects a different everyday, but not everything will be experienced as new for “job fresher” Maren Lundby. – I will have the opportunity to travel a lot and gather information. Some of the environments I have been a part of and know, such as the Olympiatoppen and the jumping national team. But I will also seek out other sports and federations and the sports that Wang works with. – I would probably say it will be a completely different everyday life, she concludes.
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Maren Lundby becomes project manager at a private school – news Sport – Sports news, results and broadcasting schedule
