Swedish Champs

The Swedish Championships in 1922 were held for the sixth time at the Stockholm Olympic Stadium. Since the beautiful edifice had been constructed, it was well worth utilising.

Speedster Engdahl 

The most trophies were collected by sprinter Nils Engdahl from the Greater Stockholm area. He won the 100, 200, and the 400 metres (for which, on Stockholm’s undersized track, additional metres had to be run from a second lap). Engdahl’s victory in the 200 metres with a Swedish record of 21.8 seconds was beyond the reach of the Finns. This performance also secured him a tied fifth place in the season’s world rankings.

For Engdahl, this was his fourth Swedish 200m title, making him the most decorated athlete in the event’s history to that point. Another world-class Swedish flyer, Knut "Knatten" Lindberg, had lifted the winner’s trophy three times between 1908 and 1912.

Backman clocks world-class times in long distances

The son of a crofter, Eric Backman, claimed victories in the 5000 and 10000 metres with world-class times, though he would have lost to Paavo Nurmi. With four championship wins from 1918 to 1923, Backman established himself at the head of the Swedish record books for the 10,000.

The 1922 championships marked the beginning of a streak of medals for Edvin Wide, who had moved to Sweden from Finland amid the turmoil of the Finnish civil war. However, he avoided competing against Backman by running only the 1500 metres, in which the primary school teacher from Enköping emerged victorious.

Carl-Axel Christiernsson, who competed in three Olympic finals in 1920 and 1924, won the trophy in high and low hurdles for the third consecutive year. Christiernsson’s form only improved as the autumn approached; at the end of September, he achieved a world-leading time of 54.9 seconds in the 400 metres hurdles. 

Oscar Zallhagen, the Stockholm giant standing some six-foot-four in his stockings, duly dispatched his tenth consecutive two-hands discus title. Fresh from placing fourth at the Antwerp Olympics, he continued to reign supreme at the summit of the record books. By the close of the 1923 season, no other Swedish athlete could touch him for such a sustained streak of dominance in a single event—a relentless run of success that left the statisticians with very little to do but update his tally.

In the hammer circle, Carl-Johan “Massa” Lind was up to his usual tricks, securing a fifth consecutive Swedish title. However, the sentimental highlight saw the Olympic javelin champion, Eric Lemming, trundle up to the podium one last time. At the ripe old age of forty-two, the wily veteran bagged a bronze in the hammer. It brought the Gothenburg man’s lifetime tally to 57 national medals between 1898 and 1922; a century later, and the poor record books in Sweden are still waiting for someone to better it.