Kristoffer Berntsson's disappointment over not making the World team

Berntsson was briefly interviewed on Swedish radio and at least two news publications about the bitter end to his season. Not surprisingly, he is contemplating retirement.

Sveriges Radio: http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=179&artikel=4355697

GP.se: http://www.gp.se/sport/1.553787-berntsson-petad-fran-vm-funderar-pa-att-sluta

Expressen.se: http://www.expressen.se/sport/1.2334005/petad-i-vm-nu-kan-berntsson-lagga-av


A blogger for ekuriren.se lamented over the fact that we will not see Koffe in Tokyo; I share her pain! http://ekuriren.se/bloggar/dansbloggen/1.843113-dansbloggen?blogPostAction=view_post&postingId=19.263964

I can't say I blame them based on his results at worlds and olympics but that has got to hurt. I don't know where they have rules where the winner of Nationals doesn't get to automatically go to worlds. Usually only the other spots are up for grabs but not the winner.

In case anyone was curious, the mini-article beneath the radio interview is virtually identical to Kristoffer's spoken words. (I've been told that he doesn't say anything more than what is written in the text except that Worlds was his big goal.) You'd only have to use Google Translate to understand most of his interview.

lavender said:

I can't say I blame them based on his results at worlds and olympics but that has got to hurt.

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Yeah, the decision to leave him off the World team is perfectly logical, but I can only imagine how deep his disappointment must be. :disapp: The same thing happened last season; he was the national champion, but Schultheiss was sent to both the Olympics and Worlds. I'm fairly certain it was a hard choice for Koffe to continue his career for one more year. He has stated numerous times this season how much he wanted to compete in Tokyo (it's where he had the skate of his life in 2007, plus he has a lot of fans in Japan), but alas, it wasn't meant to be...

lavender said:

I don't know where they have rules where the winner of Nationals doesn't get to automatically go to worlds. Usually only the other spots are up for grabs but not the winner.

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I know that Skate Canada is obligated to send the Canadian champion to Worlds, and I believe the same thing might be true for the USFSA as well. The Swedish federation obviously doesn't have this rule (which makes sense considering that for the longest time, they only had 1 spot for Euros and Worlds in each discipline).

Hmm, I now remember that there were three occasions where Berntsson was favoured over the reigning Swedish champion (2001/2002 & 2002/2003 - Filip Stiller, 2005/2006 - Adrian), so perhaps one can argue that karma does exist...



While Kris may be ready to move on with his life, I nevertheless think it would be a very nice gesture to let him know how much we appreciate that he continued to compete for one more season. You can send him snail mail at:


Swedish Figure Skating Association
Idrottens Hus
Fiskartorpsvägen 15A
114 73 Stockholm
Sweden