3 – Whatever became of him – Jóan Karl?

Machine-translated from Faroese and not yet reviewed. Read the original.

Early this century we became aware of a young runner who was doing extremely well in the stevna races around the country. This was the young man from Kollafjørður, Jóan Karl Joensen, who won countless races in the younger age groups and who, as early as 2004, aged 17, won his first Faroese Championships title in the 800 m, breaking Evald við Garð’s winning streak in the process.

Jóan Karl was part of the talent group when it was first set up. In training he always led by example and took every session 100 per cent seriously. In 2005 he went to Shetland for his first Island Games and reached a final. Jóan Karl was also part of the Island Games teams in Rhodes in 2007 and Åland in 2009. From 2003 to 2009 Jóan Karl took part in many competitions in Iceland and Sweden with excellent results, and the odd age-group record still stands. But since then not much has been heard of Jóan Karl.

Some may remember the commotion at the Ministry of Education when it emerged that the upper secondary programme at the Fisheries College in Vestmanna could not be recognised for further study at university. The reason for the row was that Jóan Karl, who had just graduated from the Fisheries College with the highest grade ever, could not be enrolled to study fisheries at the university in Tromsø. The matter was taken up at the highest political level, ending up with the Danish Minister of Education, who resolved it so that Jóan Karl was allowed to study fisheries at the world’s northernmost university in Tromsø.

Conditions for running in Tromsø are very poor. There is no running scene, and the snow and darkness are hardly the best training partners. So it is not so strange that Jóan Karl the outdoorsman and hunter has overtaken Jóan Karl the runner. We hope, though, that the Faroese fishing industry will later benefit from Jóan Karl’s knowledge, and that he will then once again put athletics first.

Jóan Karl the hunter. Here it’s hares. But it’s above all trout that send his hunting instinct off the scale.

He had the ability for more, but only once did he manage to run under 2 minutes in his favourite distance, the 800 m. Unfortunately for Jóan Karl, the track in Tórshavn came too late, so he never really got the benefit of it.