Sundling Recounts Night-Time Throat Scare Before Olympic Gold

Swedish cross-country skier Jonna Sundling has described how a sudden sore throat in the middle of the night briefly convinced her that her Winter Olympics were over, only days before she won sprint relay gold in Italy. Speaking on the Swedish podcast "Vallaboden," produced by Expressen, the 31-year-old said she woke in the night with throat pain and quickly alerted her coaches and support staff, according to Nettavisen. She returned home from the Games with three medals, including the sprint relay title.

Why it matters

Sundling's account offers a rare look at the pressure and uncertainty that surround athletes at a major championship, where a single night of symptoms can threaten months of preparation. It also sheds light on how illness moved through the Swedish team during the Games. According to Nettavisen, Sweden had already recorded sickness in its squad: Linn Svahn had caught a cold and was isolated, and Maja Dahlqvist was brought into the sprint relay lineup alongside Sundling.

A false alarm in the early hours

Sundling told the podcast that during the short time she was awake, she messaged "everyone concerned" to report that she felt ill and that the situation looked serious. She described telling them the race would not go ahead, then went back to sleep.

When she woke a few hours later, the pain had vanished. Sundling said she found the turnaround hard to believe and that nothing like it had ever happened to her before. She began to question whether she had genuinely felt the discomfort or had simply dreamed it, Nettavisen reports.

The relief did not end the confusion. When she sent a fresh update to her coaches and team leaders, their response was blunt, according to her account in the podcast.

Gold, then symptoms returned

Sundling came through the prologue without trouble, and she and Dahlqvist delivered on their status as favorites by taking Olympic gold in the sprint relay. But a few days later the symptoms came back. Sundling had to sit out the final distance race alongside Frida Karlsson and left Italy to head home, Nettavisen reports.

Her Games still ended with three medals, the sprint relay gold among them. The episode remains a striking detail from a championship in which the Swedish team was already managing illness behind the scenes.

What to watch: whether Sundling offers further detail on the illness that cut her Games short, and how the Swedish federation assesses the spread of sickness within its squad during the Olympics.