Sven Johanson came to the United States in 1951 from Korpika, Sweden. He tried to make the 1956 US Olympic team, after winning the 1955 North American cross-country championships, but did not get citizenship in time to do so. Johanson won the Mt. Marathon race every year from 1954-59. He was US cross-country champion in 1957. Johanson competed for the US at the 1958 World Championships and the 1960 Winter Olympics. In 1961 the US Army established the biathlon training center near Fort Richardson, Alaska, and Johanson coached US biathletes in skiing from 1961-73. Johanson later worked on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and tragically died from electrocution in an industrial accident in Eagle River, Alaska in 1976. He had been inducted into the US Ski Hall of Fame in 1975.
United States