We have talked to Sandra Anderberg, Swedish Champion and international representative of Sweden, about her goals and plans for this season. She also gave us some insights on vaulting in Sweden. Keep on reading and train like the Swedish Champion!
About Sandra
Age: 26
Nationality: Swedish
Horse: Paula 219, Sarah Kay’s reserve horse for this year. (Dynamite TS – my horse I own together with my training partner Sara Pettersson, we are educating him to be a vaulting horse in the future)
Lunger: Andrea Kay (Julia Lundh/Pernilla Sjöstrand)
Achievements in Vaulting: Swedish champion for 4 years in a row, Nordic champion 2015 and a 17th place at the Europeans in Aachen 2015 (5th place with the team this year, too)
Started vaulting at the age of: 9
I couldn’t live without: My iPad
I could perfectly live without: Spiders
Motto: “Believe you can and you will”
1. How are you doing at the moment with your trainings?
I just started to work out according to my plan after an injury with my foot. But soon I am back on track 🙂
2. What happened to your foot? How is recovery going and will you be ready for the FEI European Championships? Are you planning to participate at the FEI World Equestrian Games (WEG) 2018?
I got injured when I fell of my horse (Dynamite) and the ligaments on both inside and outside of the foot were ripped apart/damaged. So that hurted a lot and I couldn’t walk or stand for a week. And the thought of just try to do some jogging or even jump down from a horseback made me afraid at that time. But thanks to a great rehab team here in Malmö I have recovered very fast and now it is “just” a bit weak/instabile and swollen. We have been trying to make it more stable by training the muscles around the ankle. So it has been a lot of rehab training this spring.
I really hope and think I will be ready for European Championships. But after Europeans, I think I will take some time off and just do “good things” for my foot and not put a lot of pressure on it so the swelling and a possible inflammation can disappear.
Yes, my goal is to qualify for WEG 2018 and after the Europeans this year I will know more about my chances and the qualification criteria from the Federation.
3. What are your goals for this season?
To qualify for the Europeans in Ebreichsdorf and to defend my title as the Swedish champion.
4. Where are the Swedish Championships? What about the level?
The Swedish Championships are in my hometown, Malmö, in two weeks. The level is not so high here, we are only about 10 vaulters in the 3* class and maybe 2 or maximum 3 do all the technical exercises. But it’s fun because you know everybody so I’m hoping for a great weekend with a good runthrough of all my programs.
5. What is ALWAYS in your training bag?
Actually nothing interesting, just vaulting shoes, water, my skin guard and tape. Oh, and of course my music player.
6. Are you a vaulting fashionista? How is your weirdest training pants?
I don’t think I have so many weird vaulting pants, but I like my pink ones the most. They make me happy 🙂
7. What model of vaulting shoes do you prefer and why?
I prefer Bleyer shoes for compulsory and Nadia’s for freestyle and tech test.
8. Some vaulters use different surcingles for compulsories and freestyle, do you? If yes, why?
I have the same for both compulsory, freestyle and tech test at the moment. I use the S handles.
9. Do you have sponsors? What is your relationship with them?
No I don’t have any sponsors (yet) 😉 Right now I don’t have the time to try to get sponsors. Sounds weird, right? But because work and vaulting takes most of my energy during the days 🙂
Maybe me and my team will sit down and make a “sponsorplan” in winter. Because as you say vaulting is an expensive sport and a sponsor would be great.
10. Can you list the main products you compete with?
The surcingle is from Christoph Lensing and we have been using this for almost 5 years. The pad is pretty new and we are trying the “Felt Pro Pad”. We have a new horse at home (Dynamite) and for him this pad was such a change! Suddenly I could do my freestyle, the technical roll and so on much easier. So we will keep this on him. With Paula we have the same pad and surcingle.
11. If you had to invent a new product for the vaulting community, what would you create?
Hmm, nothing I can think of now 🙂 My dream is actually that my club could get a moving barrel. That would help so much since we don’t have so many horses for me to practice on. But this already is invented 😉 maybe a sponsor would be good to have here, haha.
12. Any surprise/announcement for us?
My favourite move in my freestyle is my handstand. And everytime I visit a new place I want to take a handstand pic.
Photo: Malin Kyttä
13. Please tell us a bit about vaulting in Sweden. Do people know the sport? Is the vaulting community in Sweden growing? Do Swedish vaulters have troubles obtaining vaulting material?
Vaulting is really small in Sweden but it is growing. Some years ago I had to explain to everyone who asked about my sport what it was. But now many people have seen it for example on TV. Right now we have many new horses, but most of them don’t have that much experience in Sweden.
Yes, it is hard to find vaulting material in Sweden. We often buy at CVI’s but for the ones who are not on that level it is very hard.
