Tag: Biathlon

The organizers of Holmenkollen Ski Festival are yet to send the latest winners of the storied race the checks they are entitled to. Last month Holmenkollen 30/50k produced some of the most exciting races of the last season with Frida Karlsson and Alexander Bolshunov beating the host nation stars in front of the traditional massive crowds. There was just one problem with that " crowds" definition: those were non-paying citizens exercising their free-access rights alongside the tracks in the forest. The terraces of the large Holmenkollen stadium remained empty on early coronavirus fears - likely rightly so from what we now know about how the disease spread. For the organizers, however, it was a nightmare: having to bear all the costs associated with holding a FIS World Cup event with…

Sorry to be a harbinger of bad news, but the next international season in cross country skiing is going to suck for many a team. Good news: the season shall happen. Those resourceful Chinese have shown how to beat the nasty virus - and how long it takes. By the next November the world should be largely COVID-19 free or, at least,with a disease under control. The problem is, while it's still out, raging , the world top economies are suffering, badly. To put it bluntly, in the next few months both governments and private sponsors would have more pressing needs than sponsoring cross country skiing extravaganzas in the Alps. Proper pro-teams need millions of euros per season to function and to win medals. The first sign that happy-go-lucky days…

On the photo above you see what happens when a sponsor's rep got stuck on his/ her way. Emma Ribom, fresh from grabbing a U23 world championships' gold medal, is posing to photographers ...with actual skis on which she won minutes ago! Stands out quite a bit - especially as Johanna Hagstroem and Julia Kern hold de rigueur " podium skis" from their respective sponsors. We get the idea behind podium skis in principle: a sponsored athlete is a walking (skiing) advertisement but the only time photographers and television cameras are guaranteed to capture one' gear is a victory ceremony, both formal and informal kind. And no part of the FIS long rulebook says it should be the actual pair. Athletes themselves might prefer to hold clean podium skis instead…

The Quebec Sprints are no more for Svahn, Sundling, Dahlqvist, Ribom and Co. The Swedish team is packing & leaving Canada ASAP. " Due to the uncertainty regarding canceled flights and travel bans, we do not want to risk that our athletes will not be able to return from Canada after the weekend. That is why we have decided that they are going home already today " reads a press release issued by the team manager Daniel Fåhraeus. The big discovery of this season, 20 year old Linn Svahn currently leads the Sprint Cup table but could be overtaken now by Anamarija Lampic who is third in standings and is slated to run on the weekend as the races in Montreal as stillon - at least as this is being…