It’s awesome to be back in Falun, Sweden. Every year Falun holds World Cup Finals. I was here for these races last year, and I was here in January of 2006 for a pre-camp to the junior Scandinavian championships. Next year Falun will hold the World Championships, so everything here is geared towards that. Unfortunately there isn’t any natural snow for this test event. Here’s the view from my hotel room (which I’m sharing with Reese Hanneman this week).
We can also see the venue from our room, so we knew there was at least a little bit of snow to ski on.
It’s the last week of the World Cup season. On Monday we’ll fly home after over four months in Europe. Everybody was in a good mood today because the sun was out; it definitely feels like spring. Here’s Reese on his way to the venue:
The World Championship logo is everywhere.
This will be a cool place to come back to for the main focus of next season, but I have to admit I am very jealous of the alpine skiers who get to have World Champs at home (in Vail/Beaver Creek) next year. The venue looked like a massive construction zone today because they are trying to get things ready for this weekend, and they’ve got ongoing bigger projects in preparation for next year.
The stadium and one of the race loops wasn’t open today because they are still preparing it.
There was ample opportunity to train because they did have about 7 kilometers open, and we could stage from the edge of the stadium.
My friend and supporter from Philadelphia, Jon Schafer, is here in Falun staying with the U.S. Nordic Combined team. It was fun to see him and ski with him briefly today.
I skied with some of the Nordic combined athletes as well. Here is Taylor Fletcher:
It was such a gorgeous day.
They were even doing some work on some of the open trails.
Because there wasn’t much skiing I got to see a lot of everybody. Here is Jessie Diggins working with Jason Cork:
These race trails are cool to ski and great for spectating because they cross often. There are some cool bridges that we ski over and under. Here is Nordic combined athlete Nick Hendrickson skiing under one of them:
Here is Ida Sargent sporting the Olympic tights:
Here’s one of the closed race trails. Hopefully we’ll get to check it out tomorrow.
Coach Matt Whitcomb:
And Sophie Caldwell:
They are apparently trucking the snow in from a local alpine area and from Mora, a town 90 kilometers from here. Mora hosts the annual 90 kilometer Vasaloppet race on the first weekend in March. I assume they’re taking this snow from the Vasaloppet race course.
It must be incredibly expensive.
Here are Liz Stephen and Matt Whitcomb after their ski:
And Canadians Devon Kershaw and Justin Wadsworth on their way back to the hotel:
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