In this fourth episode of the ‘Road to’, we meet Swedish athlete Marika Wagner, competing with Team 4 Sweden. Marika shares her insights on building the perfect team, what it takes, and what is expected of a team member under extreme conditions. She also recounts the competition where the team stopped functioning, almost leading to a disastrous outcome.
I want to do one water race to execute a perfect teamwork with this team that is really what drives me what motivates me to do this together with the team and to help them deliver their best this year that’s my absolutely main focus this race is a beautiful dark Beast it’s the hardest race in the world I’m not quitting one of the toughest things humanly possible what is the ultimate proof of unit capacity the most important part of one water race is the team and that’s also why I I’m triggered and excited for this race I love the Dynamics of team sports and building the Dream Team my name is ma I live in Fallen and I’m competing with team for Sweden during a hard race like this where everything is put to the Limit you need Trust And You Want Build That trust in in the middle of a storm trust is something you need to build in a team in beforehand I think to build this trust for a strong team it’s important to have pretty clear roles when I raise with the team and I have a role I want to know what’s the expectation when I have that I perform so much better because when I know what’s expected from me I’m highly motivated to do that really well and also when I know what other people’s roles are I’m also highly motivated to help them do their role to their best last year’s one water race team was my best team experience ever we really pushed each other forward in a positive way M yeah winter yeah come Absol for a long race like this we need to communicate and you need to create that space where you feel safe to say I feel like if you share the burden it will be easier and I think you can do that without spreading any negative [Music] energy there was never a moment where I didn’t feel trusted in any decision or no time I felt like I wasn’t enough or I didn’t contribute it enough and that feeling made me grow stronger throughout the race best this is fallen and the forest of lnet and I love it here it’s ski tracks in the winter mountain bike trails running trails endless and a lot of hills and a magnificent view as a reward OT loves the outdoors as well as me but we actually met through Instagram she wrote to me uh on one of my pictures and say in Swedish hooked feets like really nice picture and he replied and then that’s six years ago my job as a photographer is so much fun when I work with her cuz I can I can be creative I can do whatever I want cuz no one is paying me and then we’ll be out in the forest for a whole day and she’s always up for it and then when she racing I’m like her media team and tag along in all the races we moved to this town to get smaller circles in life we want uh things to be close we want our training grounds to be close the forest close the Nature close and our friends SAR is actually one of my oldest friends we’ve been friends since a really long time and we started biking in the same road biking team and got to know each other and we competed together and especially competed for Sara in the team because she was our most talented writer and uh that’s where my love of team racing started um to strive for someone else for something bigger than yourself the Team Dynamics in Road biking is very special because you raise as a team but then you don’t actually win as a team but I think coming from that dynamic you learn to think about team sport in a different way because what I did in our road biking team was to bike hard and sacrifice myself for Sarah’s sake to do the team effort in an individual sport you really need to trust each other because the glory will go to the one on the podium I have this experience uh from New Zealand where I raised with a team of experienced Racers everyone was a good Adventure racer and because of that we never really talked about uh roles or how to make the team work and in the middle of the race everything fell apart it um Turned out we didn’t really know who was the main Navigator and we ended up in a situation where the team got split and we could actually couldn’t actually found each other and that was a hard Les lesson about how important no matter how experienced you are you need to build a team Before the Race because we were standing there in the pouring rain stormy winds and talking about who in the team to trust that’s not the place to do that this is my gym and I love it because it’s small and and it’s rough and it got everything I need I’ve been doing my strength training in this kind of gym for my whole life and yeah you feel at home they have a saying in her family that in a Wagner never quits if you start at the starting line you go to the Finish Line if nothing really bad happens and so she’s so dedicated and she’s she’s the reason for us to do so much stuff I I’m a loose dreamer and she gets everything to happen I’ve been looking for the next challenge and uh might sound crazy but that’s what I’m here for like diving literally into unknown Waters uh dark and cold ones to see what’s actually possible