Going in with a bang: Season
2013/14 gets underway in Kuusamo!
Kuusamo by night - NordicFocus
The wait is over! From this weekend on it will be
all about races, results, points and podiums again
for the elite of the Nordic Combined athletes when
their season starts in Kuusamo, Finland.
The winter season, peppered with highlights like
the Olympic Winter Games in Sochi and the Nordic
Combined Triple in Seefeld, will have a flying start
near the Finnish polar circle where the fortitude
of the athletes will be tested to the maximum right
at the beginning. Known for often difficult conditions
and extreme cold, Ruka's HS 142 Rukatunturi hill
will demand the utmost of concentration and a tough
cross-country course a maximum of stamina - the
perfect venue to find out who is among the best
of the ultimate winter athletes of Nordic Combined!
Germany's Tino Edelmann knows the venue well and
can look back on triumph and defeat here: "Everything's
possible in Kuusamo because the hill is not easy
to jump and can have difficult conditions. The track
is one of the hardest ones in the World Cup. If
it is very cold and the snow a little blunt, we
will see who is in the best shape very quickly."
All three disciplines are gathered together in Ruka,
a small ski resort about 30 kilometres away from
Kuusamo which offers alpine slopes but also two
ski jumping hills and many cross-country tracks
only a 5-minute walk from the cosy village centre.
A closeness and chance of contact across discipline
borders that the athletes appreciate: "I like
the atmosphere when we all are gathered together,
Cross-country, Nordic Combined and Ski Jumping",
Norwegian Magnus Krog explains. It's more show during
the competition days, and I feel this gives me an
extra touch of excitement. When I can handle this
in the right way, it helps with my performance".
As this is the season opening, the first competitions
(a Team Event on Saturday and an Individual Gundersen
compeptiion on Sunday) will be mostly about getting
a feeling for the level of performance required
in this Olympic winter and to see how the competition
is doing. Big names like Eric Frenzel and Jason
Lamy Chappuis will certainly be the standard that
everyone is comparing to. "It isn't easy to
jump in Kuusamo due to the difficult weather conditions,
so the older and more experiences athletes will
have an advantage," Austria's head coach Christoph
Eugen predicts. But as we know, the sport always
writes its own stories. We certainly can't wait
for the first chapter in the book of 2013/14.
Program (local times! CET -1h)
Friday, 29.11.
10:00 Official training HS 142
12:00 Provisional Competition Round/Qualification
15:30 Official training cross-country
Saturday, 30.11.
08:45 Trial Round HS 142
09:45 TEAM EVENT Competition Round HS 142
14:30 TEAM EVENT 4 x 5 km cross-country race