LINDGREN: WE LOST HEART

LINDGREN: WE LOST HEART

Monday 16th July 2012, 09:41

Swedish star Freddie Lindgren admits seeing the gold medal slip away disheartened his side as they lost out on FIM Monster Energy Speedway World Cup bronze to Russia on Saturday.

The Orebro-born man scored nine points as his country suffered a woeful night on home shale at Malilla’s G&B Arena.

The men in yellow and blue won just four of the 20 heats and suffered badly as Tomas H Jonasson managed just three points, while SGP star Peter Ljung could only contribute one.

Russia had a nightmare start to their meeting and had just five points on the board after eight heats.

But they triumphed in four of the last five races, which included a six-pointer from Emil Sayfutdinov in heat 17. This win pulled them level with the Swedes and gave them the initiative in the race for third.

While the home fans were dejected to see their men not even reach the rostrum, Lindgren admits it was hard to get motivated after their hopes of a first SWC win since 2004 faded away.

"When we didn’t have the chance to go for gold, psychologically it got a bit hard for us."

- Freddie Lindgren

He said: “We never got the feeling we had a chance and it makes it hard psychologically. We didn’t want the bronze – we wanted to go higher.

“When we didn’t have the chance to go for gold, psychologically it got a bit hard for us. We wanted to do something good for Sweden, but unfortunately it’s not our time yet. We’ll have to battle on and try and make the fans proud in the other competitions.”

Lindgren admits nine points from Andreas Jonsson, including a joker win in heat eight, kept his side in contention early on. But the Wolves star knows his team wasn’t consistent enough.

“We are a lot better than this,” he said. “We thought we had a really good chance, but we didn’t have any answer to Australia and Denmark to start with. We got a little bit far behind in the early heats and AJ was the only one who kept us a little bit alive.

“No-one had a great meeting. AJ started off terrifically, but he tailed off a little bit. It took Tomas a few heats to get going and Peter had a really rough night.”

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