Carolina Klüft rests after her Triathlon in Stockholm (© Hasse Sjögren)
Carolina Klüft is one of the great characters of world athletics, along with being one of the supreme stars of the sport. She is the World, Olympic and European Heptathlon champion and this Friday in Madrid, Spain, she will be looking to pocket more gold.
Seeking the atmosphere
Klüft takes part in the Pentathlon at the European Indoor Championships, five disciplines that are completed on the opening day and a competition where victory will further enhance her position as the best multi-eventer of modern times.
But she will not be there for the adulation. She will be there because even a few months after winning in Athens, she has been missing the atmosphere of what the big events are all about.
"It is important to be at the Championships," she says. "It is always fun to go out to compete and to meet all the athletes again, and be on the track. Three years ago, I did the Pentathlon (in Vienna). I finished third and it will be fun to see how far I can go this time."
A private life
It is an atmosphere that puts this Swedish star at centre stage. But if the public face of Carolina Klüft is one of smiles and gold medals, her private side could hardly be different.
Away from the track, Klüft devotes a great deal of her time to supporting children in Africa. They do not even know who she is, except that she runs and jumps.
Since she was 16, Kluft has been 'fostering' children through a sponsorship programme, where they become the links to the villages they live and she plays a part in helping them improve their lifestyles.
It is why in between being an Olympic gold medallist, she has now started a University course in her town of Vaxjö where she is studying Peace and Development. Because she is so down to earth, her fellow students do not bother her for autographs. She is there for the same reason as them she does not use her name to promote what she does - she just does it.
She writes to children in the village to discover their lifestyle and they do not know who she is. She says: "It is something I do as 'Private Carolina'. Not as 'Carolina Klüft the athlete'. It has nothing to do with the profession I am involved in. I have my third foster child. It is a boy who is 10. It is more like you help a village to develop different things and when the village can handle things on their own, you move to the next one. The kid is like the connection. You write letters to learn about their different world to your own.”
Peace before a World record
"I tell them I like to run and jump and they tell me they like to play soccer. I support them (the villages) with money every month, so my organisation can help the village. But it is up to them in the village, whether they should have a water pump or build up the school.”
"The (university) course I am studying is about things in the world - for example, why are so many people starving in certain countries and what can we do to develop them. What is the best way to have some justice in this world and how peace is connected to development and how you have to have peace to develop a country.”
"I would rather have world peace than a world record because what I do as an athlete is not really that important.”
Post athletics?
"I am not sure what I will do after athletics. Maybe I will become involved in something like that. I do not like the world as it is now, many things can be done to make it a better place.”
The end of this week is all about athletics. The Pentathlon in Madrid is made of the 60m Hurdles, High Jump, Shot Put, Long Jump and 800m but even at 22, Kluft knows when the time will be right to bow out of the sport.
She says: "I still try to take one year at a time. Right now it is this year. My dream is to go to Beijing but you never know what will happen tomorrow. I will live this year first of all, and then we will see after that.”
"I will keep doing this until it is not fun anymore; and when it is not giving me anything any more."
The fun starts again soon - for a woman who knows how to mix it with seriousness in just the right measure.
By an IAAF Correspondent
