Breaking Records: Swede Elvira Ek Shatters 10 SkiErg World Records

Elvira Ek first stood out to us in the 2020 SkiErg World Sprints: the 18-year-old from Gothenburg, Sweden, set a new age group world record during the 1000m event by breaking the past records by 15 seconds. It’s remarkable in how quickly she’s started competing at such a high level.

A coach at Elvira’s CrossFit gym invited her to join the SkiErg World Sprints. She didn’t have much experience with the SkiErg, but quickly realized her prowess. “A week before the competition I did 750 meters as a buy in and got a pretty decent time. We looked up the world record and saw that I had a good chance on beating it,” Elvira Ek explains.

When the day came, she broke the world record on her first try. “It felt great. You can accomplish a lot by believing in yourself,” Elvira says.

Since then, she has dedicated to hours and hours of training. Together with her coach, Marcus Selander, they made a plan to break all the world records in her age group by calculating the perfect pace to reach these goals. She currently owns the following records:

• 1 minute, 322m
• 100m, 0:18.0
• 500m, 1:36.8
• 1000m, 3:29.3
• 4 minutes, 1121m
• 2000m, 7:26.0
• 5000m, 20:30.8
• 6000m, 24:00.0
• 30 minutes, 7297m
• 10,000m, 41:14.3

Elvira broke her tenth world record right before the New Year with her 2000 meter result; she broke the previous record by a full minute. “I was a little nervous before, but since I managed to keep the right pace throughout the set, I was never really worried that I wouldn’t make it,” Elvira says in an interview with Sweden’s The Gothenburg Post.

The sprint to complete the full collection of SkiErg world records was completed in just one and a half months but she doesn’t plan on stopping there. This year, Elvira is turning 19 years old and moving up an age class. “Either I’m going after those world records, or I’ll try out for the ones on the RowErg,” Elvira says to The Gothenburg Post.

We’ll be looking for more entries this year with her name on them.