In about a week’s time, the Norwegian national flycasting team will be present at the World Championship in Flycasting. The team counts 17 casters, and medals will be awarded in all six flycasting disciplines in addition to the combinations. Sweden is the host of the WC event this year. The competition will take place in Åhus from August 19-25. In the overhead events, preliminary exercises will be thrown on August 19-23, with the finals occurring on Saturday, August 24. The spey events will be conducted on August 22 and 23 with finals held on the same day. See the program here.
The Norwegian national team is led by two captains. Steinar Røstad is captain for the overhead casters, while Jarle Strandberg is leading the spey team. Both have years of experience, both as casters and in their role as team captains. In addition to Steinar and Jarle – who both participate in all six disciplines – the Norwegian team includes four women. Anita Strand, Tone Braathen and Linda Brattekværne have all previous experience from the national team, while Kristin A. Andersen is new to the group. Geir Hansen, Glenn Jacobsen, Bjørn Knutslid, Kjetil Bertelsen, Martin Nøkleberg, Nils Øyvind Mæhle, Øyvind Strand, Gari O. Aikio and Trond Nøkleberg also have lots of previous experience, while Trond Askildsen and Tom Robertsen are new participants
The Norwegian team won several medals and top positions at the previous World Championships, which were held in 2022. On the current team we have Kjetil Bertelsen who won gold medal in events 1-4, Jarle Strandberg and Geir Hansen with silver and bronze respectively in spey 18′, Steinar Røstad with silver in salmon distance and Martin Nøkleberg with bronze in sea trout distance. In addition, Tommy Aarkvisla, Eirik Hærnes Larsen and Harald Ø. Jensen won Norwegian gold medals in spey 15′, spey 18′ and trout length respectively. They will, however, not be competing in this year’s World Championships. Anita Strand impressively won one gold, two silver and one bronze in Spey 18′, Spey 15′, Trout precision and combination 1-6 respectively, while Tone Braathen won gold in salmon distance. Amongst the veterans, Nils Øyvind Mæhle won gold medal in Salmon distance and silver in Sea Trout distance. This also gave him a second place in the 1-4 combination.
The team has been training hard all summer, and several of the casters have been carrying both rods and weight lifting equipment in the back of their cars while they’ve been on vacation. In other words, the game is on in a week’s time!
