Nordic World Championship

The FIS Nordic World Ski Championships have been held in various numbers and types of events since 1925. Since 1985, the World Championships have been held in odd-numbered years - in 2011 in Oslo! It took place in Oslo from 23 February to 6 March 2011 at Holmenkollen. The Championship events included 21 competitions within the nordic skiing's three disciplines: Cross Country Skiing, Ski Jumping and the combination of both called Nordic Combined. 

However, the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships are more than a sports festival at Holmenkollen. It is was a cultural festival in the Oslo centre and all activities downtown were free of charge. Preprations for this event had been going on for a long time, minimum already since my arrival in March 2011; it was THE event in town!

One special attraction in town coming along with the Championships were huge Munch-themed ice sculptures all along Karl Johans gate...

... and the wooden carvings of famous Norwegian winter athlets.

Wednesday, 23 February:
 The official opening of the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships 2011 started at 18:00 at Palace Hill (Slottsbakken) and ended at University Square. It included a performance of the WSC song by Maria Haukaas Mittet. I couldn't leave the office early enough to be present at this opening ceremony.



Thursday, 24 February:
On thursday I was able to be at the University Square so attend the show with Madcon, Wenche Myhre and other famous Norwegian personalities.

(Madcon)

 

(Wenche Myhre)

All cultural activities in the evening were followed with the medal ceremonies for the day's competition winners.

Next to having a look at a variety of free cultural events we also attended the happenings at the sporting venues at Holmenkollen.

Saturday, 26 February:For this day Audrey, Jana, a friend of hers from Germany and I had bought tickets to attend the competitions as follows:
10:00 - Nordic Combined: Individual Normal Hill
11:30 - Cross-Country: 15 km Pursuit Ladies
13:00 - Nordic Combined: Individual Normal Hill/Gundersen 10 km
15:00 - Ski Jumping: Normal Hill, Individual Men

The competitions on this day were taking place at the smaller ski jump, the Midstubakken and the cross country arena. So tickets we bought were standing places in the T-zone for the ski jump and O-zone for the cross country competitions - not the best places, but they already cost us a fortune: 622 NOK (~80€)!!!

Of course, for this prices we hoped to have fantastic day and experience something great, an extraordinary event. Unfortunately, this day turned out to be an awful day. The reason being not only the extremely bad weather, but especially the total misorganisation of the event on the spot.
Sure, the weather conditions are force majeure, but we had the worst conditions one could encounter on such a day: it wasn't only cold, but it was snowing, all grey and totally foggy. We had a range of vision of some metres only. So we could hardly see the venue or the athlets, let alone the ski jump. During the whole ski jumping competition in the morning I haven't seen the ski jump once. It was too for up shrouded in fog!
Luckily, as the R-zone wasn't sold out they opened it up for everyone so we could leave the T-stands and go down closed to the arrival area of the ski jump.

The German Nordic Combined skier Eric Frenzel won this competition.

After this nordic combined ski jump competition it was time to leave the Midstubakken and proceed to the cross country area.

And at this point I'd like to write a little note about the absolut misorganisation of this day/event.

Everything started already early in the morning. Since we only had standing places we had agreed on meeting early in order to be at the venue enough time in advance. The ski jump at Midstubakken was supposed to start at 10:00, the trial jumps already from 09:00. So we thought about meeting up at Majorstua T-bane station in town at around 08:00. The T-bane line 1 had been renovated over the couple of years for these Championships, in order to handle all those spectators travelling up to Holmenkollen. Still, when we arrived at Majorstua there was already a total chaos and the whole station was overcrowded. Since Jana and her friend were delayed, Audrey and I decided to already get up to the venue to guarantee good spots. We just made it right on time, because the chaos became even bigger. The trains were not frequent enough and not able to handle the amount of people. It took Jana and her friend over 1,5 hours to join us at the venue and right after they had left, they had to close Majorstua station, because they were not able anymore to handle the pushing crowd of people. So the chaos had already started downtown.

However, on the spot it was absolutely no better! After the first ski jumping competition which were over after about an hour, at 11:00 a.m., we had exactly 30 minutes to get from the Midstubakken over to the cross country area where the 15km cross country pursuit of the ladies was to start at 11:30. The distance is actually not too far (some hundred metres), but the way to there wasn't appropriate and prepared at all to handle thousands of people. The crowd (included people with baby carriages and buggies, elderly people, slow kids etc) was moving super slowly and people started pushing and getting off the track to make their way in somehow towards the cross-country field.

Once arrived there the chaos continued. The organisers channeled the crowd through tight passages that didn't allow any view on the racing tracks. The volunteering hosts and helpers on the spot became totally stressed by this chaos and were pretty unfriendly by that time. Of course, we and thousands of others didn't make it on time to see the race which was for most of the Norwegians the hightlight of this day and the reason they came. They all came to see Marit Bjørgen, a Norwegian cross-country skier and triple olympic champion who is the most successful sprinter in Cross-Country World Cup histor. However, the only thing they could get to hear (not so see!!!) was her victory of that race. So basically we had all paid for a race most of the people never get to see, because they never manged to get from one venue to the other on time!

So after having missed the second discipline of the day, because of having been stuck in the middle of a huge crowed, we tried to get to our places in the O-zone to attend at least the second part of the Nordic Combined: the 10km cross-country run. 

As one can see on the picture the O-stand was already pretty full and yes, indeed, there was no more place for us. And still, the coordinators on the spot pushed and forced us to move on and in there. They simply didn't get that there was no way of moving forward or getting on this stand. So in somehow we managed to turn around and to sneak around the controls for entering the M-stand from where we had in the end a pretty good place close to the racing tracks. And still I cannot really claim to have had a great view - because the fog made no move at all do vanish.

 

 

 

(have a closer look - we managed to take a picture while one of the athlets is about to fall!)

(Crown Prince Haakon with his wife Crown Princess Mette-Marit)

(in the middle: Harald V, king of Norway)

Though the last part of today's competitions was for us pretty good due to the good places we found in the end, the chaos continued. The main competitions included in the ticket were over and thousands of spectators wanted to leave the venue, thus moving towards the exits and in the direction of the nearest public transport. Which failed once again today!
Queues for the T-bane were infinitely long and coordinators aggressively advised us to "simply go back down to town by foot!" Did he really suggest that? That's ridiculous! That is approx. a 10 km walk to the city centre! Ok, young people like us can take it. But apart from having been out in the cold and already standing on our feet all day, there are elderly people or families with kids and carriages which can't just "simply walk" back to town!
But in the end there was no other choice. The frequency of the t-bane and the shuttle busses weren't sufficient and so we did walk town-wards. Eventually we ended up at a t-bane station where we managed to sneak into one of the carriages that brought us back to Majorstua station...



So as you can see, this day wasn't the best experience: weather total shit and organisation on the spot equalling a catastrophy. What a day! But at least it was a great day for the German athlets: Germany got made the 1st, 2nd and 4th place, thus one gold and one silver medal :-)


Of course this day was followed by a lot of complaints and public discussions about this mis-organisation etc. "Sorry, we just didn't expect that many people! We couldn't imagine that there were soooooo many people interested in seeing it!"  How can someone say that? What an event organiser is that? And additionaly: couldn't they simply have had a look at the amount of tickets sold? That would have given them a hint on the expected crowd! But well, what shall we say!?
Anyways, the following days it apparently had been improved and everything went smoothly!



After a little warm up at home we all met again later in the evening. During a nice dinner at Tullin's Café, we exchanged the pictures of the day.

Saturday, 5 March:
12:00 - Cross-Country: 30 km mass start free ladies
15:30 - Ski Jumping: Large Hill, Team Men

For the latter of the above disciplines on that saturday, Jana and Audrey had bought tickets. Since the tickets were so expensive and since I'm not too much into these sports, I couldn't be bothered to spend again all that money. What counted for me was the experience... which I had the weekend before. However, the two girls wanted to see the ski jumping from this new architectual masterpiece, the new and world's most modern ski jump, at Holmenkollen which was completed in February 2010.

Audrey and Jana were much more lucky with the weather on the 5th of March. A got some of the pictures Audrey had taken that day which I don't wan to withhold from you:

 

They definitely had a better day!

Sunday, 6 March:
In the evening of sunday, 6th of March, the whole event was over and celebrated with a closing ceremony, again on University Square.

Though I anticipated a big crowd, we unfortunately all met up too late to attend this event :-( By the time we met the city and exspecially the area around the University square at Karl Johans gate and Nationaltheatre was already super croweded. One couldn't move anymore and since there were not many big public screens there was no chance that I could see anything of the show. And I wasn't even tall enough to see over the head of the "big guys" I had infront of me. So I couldn't even take pictures.

What a pity! I didn't get anything of this closing ceremony. But well, our own fault. We could have met earlier.

And that it was, the end of this huge event Oslo was looking forward to for such a long time!