DS News Team

14Nov 2020 by DS News Team

Peter Schlickenrieder: There Is No Way This System Can Continue. Big Changes Need To Happen

The tensions that were/are simmering in the top-level international skiing seemed to have reached the boiling point. Late on Friday, Peter Schlickenrieder has thrown the gauntlet, publishing the Instagram post in which he openly calls for "Big changes" Earlier the same day Yelena Vyalbe has threatened to withdraw the Russian squad from the World Cup should the authorities somewhere try to quarantine an entire team if one team member gets a positive Covid test - apparently, that happened to the Russian Alpine skiers earlier this month when a waxer got corona-positive: everyone was ordered to stay indoors for over a week & not allowed to compete. Both Schlickenrieder and Vyalbe are far bigger personas in their home countries than the actual sport of cross-country skiing. Schlickenrieder, a very successful businessman,…

13Nov 2020 by DS News Team

Vuokatti Will Host FIS Nordic Junior World Ski Championships In February 2021

Leaders, Newsfeed

The FIS Nordic Junior World Ski Championships 2021 has finally found its home - fingers crossed. It was an unusually long and dramatic story: two initial locations in Poland had to withdraw even before Covid-19 pandemics in favor of Zakopane. Then Zakopane asked FIS to move it's hosting bid to 2022. Then there was a bit of confusion when FIS officially named the Italian town of Pragelato as the JWC'21 - unbeknownst to the Italian hosts. Finally Viokatti stepped in and saved the day. Unlike fairly exotic Zakopane and Prageloto, the Finnish town is a total mainstream location for the most if not all elite skiers, not the least because of its ski tunnel. Lahti, Finland was the location of JWC 2019 ( junior ski jumpers and Nordic combiners will…

12Nov 2020 by DS News Team

Lillehammer World Cup Stage’ 2020 Cancelled After All

Newsfeed

They've tried hard, valiantly. But at the end they had to give up. Late on Thursday the Norwegian Ski Association, a formal organizer of the Lillehammer FIS World Cup races, had to throw in a towel: not this crazy year, not with the current restrictions in place. The press release is talking about " postponing the event " but there are no gaps in schedule - unless someone else cancels, that is. It would appear that after the opener in Ruka, Finland the planet's best skiers will reconvene in Davos two weeks later, on December 12-13. Quite unprecedented gap in pre-Christmas competitions but the Year of COVID keeps on changing all the established notions.

10Nov 2020 by DS News Team

Yelena Vyalbe: We Need Additional Half-a-million Euros Just For Corona-testing

Money & Finance, Newsfeed

Everyone is aware of the fact that the top-level cross-country skiing is not exactly awash in money and some national teams positively struggle to have ends meet even in the best of times. The Corona-crisis will make it worse. As in " half-a-million euros worse" in case of Team Russia, as per the boss of the Russian skiing. "We normally have some 60+ people travelling to the World Cup stages - that figure includes athletes plus coaches and all the support personnel. We did the math: newly introduced COVID-19 testing measures at every stage would set us down some 500 to 530 thousand euros this season.", the chairman of the Russian Ski Association told Dailyskier.com in recent conversation. No national xcski team makes its spending sheet publicly available (with a…

04Nov 2020 by DS News Team

Alexander Legkov Talks Pre-race Sex

Newsfeed

Finally somebody in the know had to answer the question the good skiing folks really want to know the answer to. In interview with Sport Express newspaper Alexander Legkov was asked about how long elite skiers abstain from certain bed activities ahead of important race. Elite male skiers that is. "The notion is, guys have to stay away from sex for like 3 days ahead of competition. I broke that notion: did just that then went and won a World Cup stage the next day. Sure, if you spent half a night doing cavorting in bed the lack of sleep won't help. Otherwise pre-race sex is healthy and those who say otherwise don't know what they are talking about " Source: https://youtu.be/5cIhe5QbU6k

Author: DS News Team