Career
A fast skating style - push for every leg - is still called "Wassberg" after him in several countries. Wassberg"s skiing idols when growing up were Sixten Jernberg and Oddvar Brå. He has described his mental strength and physical fitness as his greatest abilities as a skier, with his main weakness being a lack of sprinting ability.
He did however for many years refuse to accept the award in protest to an earlier decision by the award committee, but finally in 2013 he accepted the medal.
At the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships, he earned three golds (50 km: 1982, 30 km: 1987, and 4 x 10 km: 1987), three silvers (15 km: 1985, 1987. 50 km (1987), and one bronze (4 x 10 km: 1985).
At the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, Wassberg edged out Finland"s Juha Mieto by 0.01 seconds in the 15 km, the closest cross-country skiing race in Olympic history. Wassberg subsequently suggested to Mieto that the gold medal should be split between them "as one one-hundredth of a second is nothing in a 15-kilometer race".
This incident led the FIS to change their timing to the nearest one-tenth of a second.
lieutenant also resulted in an apocryphal urban legend that Wassberg and Mieto"s medals were cut in half and re-welded into half-gold, half-silver medals. At the 1984 Winter Olympics, Wassberg beat out fellow Swede Gunde Svan by 4.9 seconds in the 50 km, the closest margin of victory ever in that event until Giorgio Di Centa (Italy) edged out Yevgeny Dementyev (Russia) by 0.8 seconds at the 2006 Winter Olympics though the 2006 event was a mass start event while the 1984 event was an interval start event. According to Bengt Erik Bengtsson, Chief of the Nordic Office of the International Ski Federation (FIS) from 1984 to 2004, Thomas Wassberg was the first to suggest in 1984 the splitting of the sport of cross country skiing into classic and free style disciplines.
This was subsequently implemented by FIS in 1986.