“Celebrated with some air-dried ham and beer” – QX

Congratulations Anja, you are the Champion of Champions in 2024!
– Yes! Thanks! I could never have believed that when I came down to the recording and we started, this is going to be tough I thought, then I know that there were a lot of expectations for me. So all I thought was, “I don’t want to go out first” (laughing). But it was an extremely good resistance and so fun and surprising to come home with the dent. I think that Sebastian is the one who has been the strongest throughout the season, but I managed to pull it together at the end.

And what a final it was. I was a little stressed that Jimmy was going to catch up with you when your stone houses were just collapsing.
– (laughing) I was calm, what you don’t see on TV is that Sebastian and I had taken all the flat stones, so there were only round big stones left for Jimmy, so I took it easy and set myself to come second in that competition…

There was also stress in the final against Sebastian when you even spun with the colors!
– Yes, Sebastian has always said that he is useless at numbers and colors, but he was great in those branches. I’m good at remembering numbers, but colors were harder so I had the wrong tactic there and tried to memorize too many colors at once. But I managed to do it, and when I saw that Sebastian struggled with balancing the balls, I thought that I think I can be better at that.

Yes, you sorted it out, how did you feel when the last ball rolled into the hole at the end and the victory was complete!
– So it was a very strange feeling. I thought there would be explosions and cheers but throughout the season our individual victories have been a bit quieter, on the other hand we have cheered when we won team events, so I didn’t know what to do. But production pointed to the dent and told me to lift it. And I’m very happy, it felt incredibly nice!

What a great season it’s been, what a bunch, have you had as much fun as it seemed?
– Yes, even more fun (laughing)! We were a great bunch and you were worried with every person that went that we would lose the spirit of the group but we managed to keep it throughout the program.

Was it what you thought to be in the Master of Masters?
– No, it was much tougher, both physically and mentally. It was horrible every morning when you knew they were going to torment us with some new competition. But we were nine people who became extremely tight in a short time. After all, we are all athletes who have stopped at the elite level and were now going to start competing again, but it was like therapy to be able to talk about their careers.

Have you celebrated anything?
– No. Me, Jimmy and Sebastian ended up in some hotel the night after but there was no food there, but luckily I had a cooler bag with some air-dried ham and beer with me so we celebrated with that. But we’ll see how it goes tonight, my neighbor put the champagne in the fridge early in the season but he took it out again because he got so incredibly nervous (laughing). So I guess I’ll take my bottle out of the fridge and go over with it and have a glass.