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Sophia Laukli at the 2022 Lysebotn Opp race. Laukli returned to take second place in 2023. (Photo: Ingeborg Scheve)
7.5 kilometers, 27 hairpin turns, up a fjord. For the better part of two decades, the climb up the Lysebotn Opp has marked the high point, figurative and literal, of cross-country skiing’s summer calendar.
Last year, that point was reached first by an American, Sophia Laukli, and foreshadowed her arrival as one of the world’s best climbers, no matter the season. In the intervening year between then and now, Laukli won her first podium on the Tour de Ski’s Alpe Cermis climb, and rose to the fore of the Trail running world, capped by a win at the Marathon du Mont Blanc. It’s been, for lack of a better phrase, quite the ascent, all leading back to the Lysebotn Opp again this week.
On the start line with the defending champion Laukli, was a group filled with athletes familiar to World Cup audiences, Eva Urevc (SLO), Helene Marie Fossesholm (NOR), Ingvild Flugstad Oestberg (NOR) among them. The most notable though, was another skier that has taken on new heights and new titles over the past year, 30 k and Relay World Champion Ebba Andersson (SWE).
The Lysevegen – 27 hairpins over 7.5 k that brings skiers from the village of Lysebotn to the top of the Fjord surrounding the town (Photo: Bora).
It was Andersson who was the most notable presence as the race wound through the kilometer approach to the Opp in this year’s race. Andersson marked Ingvild Flugstad Oestberg, as they formed a steady pace-line ahead the race’s main pack. Laukli, for her part, began this year’s Lysebotn Opp the way she had began last year’s ascent, preferring to stay in the pack rather than stamp out the pace at the front.
That Laukli planned on being there to defend her win became quickly apparent as soon as the race hit the climb’s base. As the pace drove up from the front from Andersson, Oestberg, Urevc (SLO) and Katarina Janatova (CZE), Laukli quickly wound through the pack to find the front of the race. As Laukli moved through the pack, Andersson moved out from the wheel of Oestberg that she had followed to the climb to lead the pack for the first time. Rather than an explosive burst, the move met the now steep road, and that little kick up in the pace led to quick separation throughout. By the time that Andersson emerged from the tunnel that led to the hairpin-rich bulk of the climb, she had two skiers on her wheel: Eva Urevc, and Sophia Laukli.
Ebba Andersson (SWE, Bib 301) is among the top competitors at this year’s Blink Festival in Sandnes, Norway (NOR). Andersson pulled ahead on the Lysebotn Opp to win the opening hill climb ahead of Sophia Laukli (USA). (Photo: NordicFocus)
The trio drove a steady V2, until one continued to drive on more. Ebba Andersson kept power and pace in her climb that would see her leave Laukli and Urevc down the road, and her alone at the top of the climb as the winner on the Lysebotn Opp.
Laukli was the first to fall off Andersson’s wheel, with Urevc coming soon after. The few following moments where Laukli and Urevc found themselves in the limbo of the race, though, were some of the most revealing to the nature of the athletes involved. Far from a fade, Laukli soon kicked her tempo up, and started to surge towards the line. The move reiterated all that observers have come to know about Laukli as an athlete in the space between her ascents of the Opp. She can climb. She can do so better than nearly anyone. A year’s worth of racing and results have only reiterated the fact. And yet, watching a remarkable athlete handle one of the sporting world’s hardest prospects wasn’t any less remarkable.
Laukli crossed the line in second place, 34 seconds off Andersson, with Urevc rounding out the podium in third place at 1 minute 4 seconds off the winner. With her second place finish, Laukli pulled alongside Liz Stephen as the only two American women to have multiple podiums on the Lysebotn Opp climb, with Stephen having taken third place in 2011, and winning in 2014. Back on skis for a brief moment in a summer full of trail racing and mountain climbs, Laukli gave an indication that there’s plenty to look forward to once the snow falls.
U.S. Ski Team and University of Utah skier Sophia Laukli, who won the Lysebotn Opp Stage of Norway’s Blink Festival on Wednesday, becoming the 2nd American to win the 7.5 k Hill Climb after Liz Stephen in 2014. (Photo: Nordic Focus).
It’s the kind of event that explains Norwegian’s love for cross country skiing – it represents all they want to represent about themselves, and nothing else. In the humid, green summer, some of the world’s best winter athletes come to the coastal town of Sandnes in the country’s south for four days of roller skiing racing – the Blink Festival – in which spectators will pack nearly every inch of town center, mountainside, or arena that the course passes. On the first day, they literally climb up a straight up a fjord – the Lysevegen road, in the Lysebotn Opp, a 7.5 k climb featuring 27 hairpins that stagger when viewed from the air (see below). It’s the essential challenge of the festival. Taking a national obsession and turning it into an event that makes a display of why the country of Norway loves it. It thumbs its nose at the notion of challenge, of not being able to hold onto winter in the summer, and frankly, the limits of what a human should be able to do on skis.
The Lysevegen – 27 hairpins over 7.5 k that brings skiers from the village of Lysebotn to the top of the Fjord surrounding the town (Photo: Bora).
Since its first running in 2006, the Lysebotn Opp has been an indicator of what’s to come not only the next winter, but longer down the road at the World Cup-level of skiing. Therese Johaug, and Charlotte Kalla both bolstered their dominant place in the women’s field over the years. The arrival of the United States Women as top-level contenders was also made apparent when Liz Stephen podiumed in 2012, and then won the climb in 2014.
Stephen’s win in 2014 was remarkable then, and is remarkable now. She was the only American to have taken the marquee event in Norway’s summer rollerski festival. That was until Wednesday, when Sophia Laukli won the Lysebotn Opp and introduced the whole of Norway (a country she’s a dual-citizen of with the United States) to another generation of American women capable of conquering the hardest skiing challenges that can be thrown at them.
The mass start 7.5 km freestyle climb began on the flat roads leading out of the tiny village of Lysebotn. On the start-line, Bib 1 belonged to Heidi Weng, who highlighted a field full of up-and-coming Norwegians and some of Europe’s best pros. Delphine Claudel and Flora Dolci from France were in the field, as was Nadine Fähndrich from Switzerland. Laukli wore bib 11. The course conditions were, as is expected and almost necessary in a fjord in Norway in the summer, rainy.
As the field rolled out, Sophia Laukli initially tucked well within the field, coming away from each split in the field in the leaders group. Those splits came mostly as a result of Heidi Weng (NOR) who controlled the front of the field on the lower part of the climb. Split after split occurred through the field, until a group of about ten skiers was left going into a tunnel about 2 km into the stage. The final break in the leaders occurred in the tunnel, and as the skiers came out of the tunnel on the course, three skiers – Weng, Dolci (FRA), and Laukli – made up the lead group, while Claudel (FRA) led the chase group, with Rahnihild Glørsen Haga (NOR) on her wheels.
Skiers roll out during Norway’s Blink Festival (Photo: Nordic Focus).
The trio of Weng, Dolci, and Laukli then set into taking turns on the front pace-making. It looked like something out of a Tour de France Mountain Stage broadcast, only that in the sport of skiing, there was more than just reading faces to aid in telling the viewer who was tired. As Dolci started to mix in V1 strokes alongside her upright V2, Laukli kept a steady V2 the entire way up, with powerful pushes holding a high tempo the whole way. The same principle at play in your local 10 k played out on the toughest rollerski climb in the world. Start to V1, and you might just be tired.
Dolci peeled off from doing her turn at the front soon after, which is when Laukli’s high-tempo V2 gained a telling bit of power. It was the moment she seemed to sense that what had been an unknowable challenge – you don’t often climb up fjords in a race setting – might just be her domain. It didn’t take a look or a pause, just a little pick-up.
As they rounded a corner and Laukli moved ahead, Weng matched her stroke-for-stroke. Then in an effort to regain the ability to do the pace-setting before the pace became too much, Weng put a burst in to get ahead of Laukli. It was too late. Laukli had already internalized that rare and thrilling feeling in ski racing where she sensed that she could keep going when others could not.
Slowly, Weng’s tempo-matching came out of sync, and Laukli gained the marginal gains in space that on a mountain pass foreshadow a race breaking apart.
Down the mountain, Claudel had started to show a resurgence and lifted away from the chase group. Cameras panned back to the lead group, and she was suddenly in the shot, gaining slightly on Laukli and Weng.
Around the next hairpin, Weng broke into a V1, and Laukli held steady. It was the decisive moment in the race. There were two skiers together on the climb, and then there was one.
In Lillehammer, Norway Heidi Weng (NOR) prepares for the Visma Ski Classics Birkebeinerrennet (Photo: Nordic Focus)
Claudel brushed past Weng in pursuit of Laukli, but the gap was opening up from the front-end of the race. Laukli looked focused, determined, and kept driving. When she hit the crowd barriers that invariably mark the end of a race in the mountains across Europe, she impossibly picked up the V2 she had kept up for nearly 5 km, never once letting a ski push off without an accompanying pole plant.
Laukli looked to be set to take her determined V2 all the way to the finish line. But then, a couple of hands, a few clutching Norwegian flags, reached out over the barrier as if to say “you’ve won, enjoy it!” Laukli did her best to meet their waiting hands, and then quickly found her wheels crossing a thin white line painted across the top of the pass. One arm raised a pole, and she showed a half-grin, before hunching over and perhaps, realizing the effort she’d just put in had netted her a big win.
Laukli then glanced over her poles and saw Delphine Claudel complete her comeback for 2nd place, +13.0 seconds from Laukli. Weng had joined up with Flora Dolci, and recovered enough to throw down a defiant sprint near the top of the climb and take 3rd place (+50.0 sec).
As Weng crossed the line, Sophia Laukli was now beaming a smile while speaking in Norwegian with NRK – the country’s state broadcasting corporation. Laukli, the dual Norwegian-American citizen, just completed a win where the metaphors are too tempting not to write. From her seaside upbringing in Yarmouth, Maine, Laukli had climbed up a literal climb to the top of that great marker of the Scandinavian landscape and psyche – the fjord. She stood there a champion, for both her countries, and all the world to see.
Sophia Laukli, with a big win at Lysebotn enters another winter as a rising star for the US on the World Cup. (Photo: Nordic Focus)
The sinuous Lysebotn Opp rollerski course. (Photo: Blink 2020 screenshot)
Times are what they are. Precautions are the name of the game. This year’s Blink Festival in Norway played to a reduced field and limited spectators due to COVID precautions. Some races, as will be noted, included modified race rules to limit close contact between athletes.
Lysebotn Opp – 06/08
The Lysebotn Opp is perhaps the marquee event. It features lovely fjord views and a grueling 7.5-kilometer uphill skate switchbacking up a mountainside. In normal years, the Lysebotn Opp is a mass start event. This year, however, it was an individual start affair.
Therese Johaug won the women’s event in 33:11 minutes. Heidi Weng placed second (+00:34), and Helene Marie Fossesholm was third (+02:20). All three skiers are from Norway with Johaug and Weng seasoned veterans with Fossesholm an upstart 19 year old relatively new to the elite level scene. Fossesholm won two individual golds at the 2020 Junior Worlds winning both the 5 k classic and the 15 k mass start skate. According to FIS, she has competed in three World Cups and notched a fifth place in last season’s 10 k mass start skate in Falun.
For the men, Norway’s Simen Hegstad Krüger won in 29:25. Hans Christer Holund was third (+01:02), and Håvard Moseby third (+01:21). Moseby, the relative unknown on the podium is 21 and placed third in the 2020 U23 Worlds 30 k mass start skate.
Therese Johaug (bib 28) winning the 2020 Lysebotn Opp. (Photo: 2020 Blink Festival FB page)
Skate Sprint – 07/08
The second day of cross-country racing featured a skate sprint. For those used to larger fields and six-skier-deep heats, things looked a bit different. This was head-to-head racing, two racers per heat, as skiers advanced to the finals. Racers were required to remain in their respective lanes throughout the race which resulted in no drafting.
Norwegian sprinter Maiken Caspersen Falla won the day with Mathilde Skjærdalen Myhrvold placing second overall. Myhrvold lost the final by 1.4 seconds. Myhrvold is 22 years old and has raced two World Cups, both in Norway.
Kristine Stavås Skistad (21) placed third overall. She lost to Falla in the second semi in a photo-finish.
Johannes Høsflot Klæbo did as he does: win sprints. The star of the show placed first in the final, 1.5 seconds in front of second place GjøranTefre. At 25, Tefre raced nine World Cups last year with his best result an eighth place in Oberstdorf’s classic sprint. Klæbo has won the last four World Cup sprint titles. Erik Valnes placed third overall. He lost out to Tefre in the second semi by 0.1 seconds.
In the individual start 10 k classic, run on a 2.5 k closed loop, Tiril Udnes Weng won in 24:57.9 minutes. Fossesholm raced to second place, 3.9 seconds back, with Johaug in third (+12.1).
Klæbo took the crown in the men’s 15 k classic over a field that featured some of Norway’s top distance talent. He won in 35:08.9, just 0.2 seconds ahead of Moseby, who was second overall in the Lysebotn Opp. Daniel Stock was third (+2.1).
If you are looking for more, as in the view-from-the-comfort-of-home experience, Norwegian broadcaster NRK has archived the 2020 Blink Festival races. You can find a menu of races here.
Ian Torchia (front) leading L3 intervals with the Stratton Mountain School (SMS) team in June. (Photo: Pat O’Brien)
Two summers ago, with just five miles left of the Marquette Trails Fest 30-mile mountain bike race, all Ian Torchia could hear in his head was the voice of Krystof Kopal, his Northern Michigan University (NMU) teammate, snidely saying, “You drop out again?”
Fifteen minutes earlier, Torchia had careened into a tree. After dusting himself off, he remounted his bike, but not before noticing his left wrist was badly injured.
For a moment, Torchia considered pulling out of the race. Thoughts of Kopal, however, kept his feet on the pedals. A few months earlier, Kopal had given Torchia ceaseless verbal flak for dropping out of the 2016 Spring Series 50-kilometer ski race due to cramping.
“[Kopal] was playing in my head … so I finished the last five miles with a broken wrist,” Torchia, now 22, recalled on the phone this summer, noting that it wasn’t until after he had finished the race that he found out it was broken.
The NMU men’s ski team with Ian Torchia (third from r) in late August. According to Torchia, the paper he’s holding is a contract. “If we win [the] team NCAA title [this winter], they get to tattoo my gluteus maximus,” Torchia wrote. (Photo: Andy Keller)Shortly after, Torchia had his wrist examined by doctor and was told he would need to have surgery. The procedure — scaphoid fixed via percutaneous fixation–left Torchia in a cast.
About a month before his crash, Torchia had been nominated to the U.S. Ski Team (USST) D-team and invited to two national-team training camps that summer. Torchia had intended to attend both camps, regardless of whether his wrist was healed or not.
Fourteen days after his accident, Torchia departed Marquette, Michigan, his “home” since he began attending NMU in 2014, and headed for Eagle Glacier, Alaska, the location of the first USST camp.
On the glacier, he skied with either one pole or none at all. When he returned to Marquette, the pattern continued for another two months. It wasn’t until the end of August that he had his cast removed.
“I kept training super hard with the broken wrist,” Torchia said.
All that training led Torchia to what he recalled as being “in pretty good shape” leading up to November. Then things started to go south. Fast. Right around Thanksgiving, Torchia was exhausted and experiencing severe night sweats.
“If you type in ‘mono’ on Google and look at the symptoms, I probably had seven out of the eight,” he said. “But I at the time was thinking ‘It’s just a bad virus. It will pass.’ ”
The symptoms continued. Torchia’s girlfriend suggested he get tested for mononucleosis. He didn’t.
“I didn’t want to believe her,” Torchia said.
Soon enough he had to. In mid-December, hypothermia forced him to drop out of a race. At 2017 U.S. Cross Country Championships in Midway, Utah, he felt sluggish and “off” during training, so he visited a walk-in clinic in Park City. The doctor tested for mono, and the results came back positive.
“The doctor was kind of nonchalant about it,” Torchia said. “He came in and was like, ‘Oh yeah, you’ve got mono, but nordic skiing isn’t a contact sport so you should be good to go and ski at nationals. I was like, ‘Oh, sweet…that’s not how it works.’ ”
Following the diagnosis, Torchia decided to skip nationals and return to his hometown of Rochester, Minnesota, for the holidays. He stopped exercising for a month before gradually returning to training.
“A lot of different skiers messaged me saying, ‘On this return, you need to take it really easy,’ ” Torchia said. (One of those skiers included Tad Elliott, who caught the Epstein-Barr virus in 2014 and went on to win a national title in 2016).
Torchia took their advice, as well as that of his NMU head coach, Sten Fjeldheim, who has helped other athletes diagnosed with mono safely return to training. The two worked out a meticulous day-by-day plan for Torchia’s return. Torchia redshirted the 2017 college season, but by March, he was back on skis.
“I wasn’t really thinking about what other people thought,” Torchia said when asked if he was worried whether others were questioning his USST nomination during that time.
“I was thinking more about the next steps,” he continued. “Like the day to day, ‘Oh, my morning heart rates are going down,’ or ‘This next weekend I can start running again.’ … I think before [mono], I was riding really high on skiing, and it was … a big, big part of my life. Getting mono kind of let me take a step back and realize, OK, there are other things [besides skiing].”
Ian Torchia (1) on the shoulders of Northern Michigan University Head Coach Sten Fjeldheim after he won the men’s 20-kilometer freestyle race at 2018 NCAA Skiing Championships in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. (Courtesy photo)
Mono not only gave Torchia a little perspective, but also an extension on his time to compete in college. By redshirting in 2017, Torchia retained eligibility to compete in 2018 (as a junior) and 2019 (as a senior). In his fifth year at NMU, he is currently working toward a master’s degree in exercise science.
This past March, he won the 20 k freestyle at NCAA Skiing Championships to become NMU’s seventh NCAA champion in program history. In the other race at 2018 NCAA’s, the 10 k classic, he placed fifth for All-American status. Earlier last winter, Torchia qualified for and competed at U23 World Championships in Goms, Switzerland.
“I try to look at the positives that mono brought,” Torchia said. “That first season of being on the USST brings a lot of pressure and inadvertently getting mono kind of lessened that. Afterward, when I got renominated to the team [last spring], I was like, ‘OK, they’ve given me this second chance, so I need to take it.’ ”
Torchia was renominated to the D-team for 2017/2018 and again this past spring for the 2018/2019 season. After his third-straight nomination, he approached his summer with revitalized vigor. For the first time since enrolling at NMU, he decided to spend some time training outside of Marquette, largely as a result of a wedding invitation from his USST teammate, Erik Bjornsen. In July, Bjornsen and Marine Dusser were married in Villard-de-Lans, France.
Right to left: Ian Torchia, Paddy Caldwell, Adrien Backscheider, Simi Hamilton, and Erik Bjornsen during a post-interval cool down in Villard-de-Lans, France. (Courtesy photo)
“After getting Erik and Marine’s ‘save the date’, I knew there was no way I was missing the wedding,” Torchia explained.
After the wedding in early July, Torchia remained in France for the USST men’s training camp. The camp lasted 10 days and featured what Torchia described as “hard rollerski intervals and epic mountain runs.”
He was accompanied by three teammates, Bjornsen, Simi Hamilton and Paddy Caldwell, and their coach Chris Grover. French national-team member Adrien Backscheider joined the group for interval sessions.
Following the camp, Torchia had made arrangements to stay in Europe for another two and a half weeks, which was partially prompted by his Norwegian teammates at NMU. Over the years, many had encouraged him to travel to Norway and compete in the famed Lysebotn Opp, an uphill rollerski race in Norway’s Blink ski festival.
Before heading to Sandnes, Norway, for Blink, Torchia made two stops. First, Oslo, where he stayed with his former NMU teammates Fredrik Schwencke, a native of the city, and Kristen Bourne, an American citizen currently training with the Lyn Ski Club in Olso.
“Pretty lucky to have so many great friends and teammates that put me up throughout the trip,” Torchia wrote in an email.
Torchia spent a week in Oslo before traveling to Kragerø, where he visited his current NMU teammate Mathias Aas-Rolid. A native of Redalen, Norway, Rolid has a cabin in Kragerø that he opened up to Torchia for “a pre-Blink training camp”.
Ian Torchia rollerskiing up Alpe d’Huez, two days before the Tour de France on July 17, 2018. (Photo: Chris Grover)
Following Kragerø, Torchia headed to Sandnes for the Blink races. Canadians Evan Palmer-Charrette, Scott Hill and Bob Thomson had rented an Airbnb in Sandnes for the weekend, and keeping with his summer nomadic style, Torchia crashed on their couch during the festival.
He competed in the 60 k distance race as well as the Lysebotn Opp. The 60 k was what Torchia referred to as “an add-on to the main focus of Lysebotn.
“For the 60, I made a big blunder by not bringing a water pack and counting on getting feeds along the race course,” he recalled. “Turns out trying to get a feed from a stationary volunteer at 20+ mph is not very effective.”
Without feeds, Torchia explained that he “bonked” halfway through the 60 k and ended up finishing 55th. The result left him ready to “turn it around” for the 7.5 k Lysebotn Opp the next day. He managered to position himself well early on in the race’s mass start and within the first kilometer, found himself with the likes of Russia’s Sergey Ustiugov and Finland’s Iivo Niskanen.
“After the 1 k tunnel, I passed Ustuigov and Niskanen and probably got a little too excited and blew my load about 2 k from the finish,” Torchia wrote of his Lysebotn start. “ ‘Twas a long 2 k in from there and almost managed to catch Harvey but just missed the auto qualifying for the mass start (top-10) by about 15 seconds. I’ve never done a rollerski race, period, so competing in Norway in the strongest field they’ve ever had was a hell of a way to start.”
Torchia placed 13th, just over 2 minutes behind the winner (and 2018 Olympic skiathlon gold medalist) Simen Hegstad Krüger of Norway and 15 seconds behind Canada’s Alex Harvey, who placed 10th.
Torchia’s summer adventure ended after Blink, and he flew back to the U.S. on Aug. 6.
“Getting to do intervals with Adrien Backscheider, [South Korean/Norwegian skier] Magnus Kim, and then race with a World Cup field at Blink served me a big piece of humble pie but was a good indicator that the summer progress[ed] well,” Torchia wrote.
Torchia is now back in Marquette, focused on school and skiing. Beyond college races, Torchia is targeting 2019 U.S. nationals in Craftsbury, Vermont, 2019 World Championships in Seefeld, Austria, and 2019 World Cup Finals in Québec City.
“It’s been some ups and downs and definitely a learning experience,” Torchia said of the years since he was first nominated to the USST. “But it’s made me stronger in the process.”
Ian Torchia (l) with girlfriend, Kameron Burmeister, hiking in Franconia Notch, N.H., during an East Coast road trip they took in June. (Courtesy photo)
Racers crest a hill at the 2018 Blink rollerski festival in early August in Sandnes, Norway. (Photo: Axelar / Arild Aarnes / Skifestivalen Blink Facebook)
In 2005, Norway’s government-owned broadcasting network, NRK, lost production rights for its national football league. In search of a new program to air in place of summer soccer games, NRK, which still held broadcast rights for biathlon and cross-country skiing, approached the Norwegian Ski Federation and the Norwegian Biathlon Federation with a question: Could they find an organizer willing to create a large summer event encapsulating the winter sports of biathlon and nordic skiing?
NRK’s answer came in Arne Idland.
Idland was serving as the team manager for the Norwegian Biathlon Federation at the time and had planned to finish his term that same year. The 2006 Winter Olympics had just wrapped up, and Idland was ready for a change.
Before stepping out of his role with Norwegian Biathlon, Idland become the chief of sport for Norway’s Blink Ski Festival, known as Blinkfestivalen.
“I spent my last months in the biathlon federation just thinking about Blink,” Idland said in a phone interview.
Biathletes racing in downtown Sandnes, Norway, during the 2018 Blink Ski Festival in early August. (Photo: Axelar / Arild Aarnes / Skifestivalen Blink Facebook)
Originally from the city of Sandnes himself, Idland said he chose the municipality as a host city for Blink because, at the time, Sandnes “had no big events.”
Since its inception in 2006, Blink has grown, becoming a premier international rollerski event. Organizers spent a grand total of 23 million Norwegian Kroner (about $2.75 million U.S. dollars) on this year’s Blink rollerski festival. That’s up from approximately 6,000,000 Norwegian Kroner (nearly $720,000 U.S. dollars) in its inaugural year.
Even with the high price tag, Idland indicated that everything at Blink — entry, exit, and post-event concerts — are free. An estimated 70,000 thousand spectators attended Blink, and not one paid to get in.
“That has been maybe one of the major key factors to our growth and our success,” Idland said. “Everything is free. We even have free concerts. No tickets to come in and that is the same today as it was at the start. Everybody can come and go just as they want.”
But how has the city been able to sustain a “free” and accessible race to the public? Sponsors, Idland explained. Through their financial backing, Idland and three others staff members are paid to work full time, year round on Blink.
When festival time rolls around, local cross-country and biathlon clubs near Sandnes pitch in to organize the multi-day event. And their time is paid. About 600 club members worked at this year’s Blink, and in total, were paid 750,000 Norwegian Kroner (about $90,000 USD).
“That’s the most important income on an annual basis for the clubs,” Idland said. “It’s also a window to show all the people the sport and to get young kids and youth to start with biathlon and cross-country.”
Much of Blink revolves around the concept of sport promotion, as opposed to pulling in dollars.
“One major thing with Blink is that Blink is open for everybody,” he said.
The festival not only includes an elite race series, but also junior and youth categories in both the biahtlon and cross-country divisions. Idland estimated that 3,000 children participated in Blink camp activities this year and 1,200 juniors entered Blink competitions. Last week, athletes from Russia, Italy, France, Sweden, Great Britain, Finland, Canada, and the U.S. made the trek to Sandnes to participate.
“We have everything from — maybe you are four years old trying rollerskis for the first time — up to the athletes like [Martin Johnsrud] Sundby and [Therese] Johaug and the other big names,” Idland said. “It’s not only a show for the big stars. It has been important both for the development of the Norwegian Ski Federation and also for the youth and juniors.”
The 7.5-kilometer race course for the Lysebotn Opp, an annual hill climb at the Blink Ski Festival in Lysebotn, Norway. (Photo: Blink Ski Festival/ Facebook)
As Blink looks to develop Norwegian skiers, it also continues to develop its race series program. In 2010, organizers added the Lysebotn Opp uphill race, which begins in the fjord town of Lysebotn before climbing 640 meters above sea level.
Three years ago, they introduced the Blink Classics distance races, which were 50- or 60-kilometers long for elite women and men, starting in the city center of Ålgård and finishing in Sandnes.
Organizers have also been keen on safety for the high-paced rollerski events on asphalt. Few of its courses feature any steep downhills, all of its courses are fenced off to spectators, and every competitor must use the same speed of rollerskis. This year, Blink provided 1,000 unused rollerskis for racers. Next year they will do the same, with even slower wheel speeds, set to the same speed.
“So next year we will use IBT 4, which are the slowest skis we have,” Idland said. “That is mainly for the safety, but also we also want the strongest athletes to win. The slower rollerskis you have, the more similar it is to winter time.”
Winter is not something Blink hopes to compete with, Idland said. Climate change, however, may moot that point.
“We do not want to become a threat to the traditional skiing on snow,” Idland said. “But … the winters get a little bit shorter and maybe also have to go a little further up in the mountains to find the snow, so I think rollerskiing will become more and more important as a supplement for skiing. Not instead of skiing, but maybe you do more rollerskiing.
“We do not want to be a threat to the FIS World Cup either,” Idland continued. “We can play along with both FIS and the IBU. If at one time in the future there should be an interest that they would do something together with Blink, we would of course sit down and have a discussion with the FIS and the IBU.”
Hopefully, that future interest is one made by choice.
The 7.5-kilometer race course for the Lysebotn Opp, an annual hill climb at the Blink Ski Festival in Lysebotn, Norway. (Photo: Blink Ski Festival/Facebook)
The Blink Ski Festival’s famed Lysebotn Opp hill climb returned on Thursday, and with it, a familiar name landed at the top of the results.
After serving an 18-month ban from ski racing and subsequently missing the 2018 Winter Olympics, Norway’s Therese Johaug is back.
Norway’s Therese Johaug winning the 2018 Lysebotn Opp hill climb, part of the Blink rollerski festival, on Thursday. She finished in a record-setting 31:46.3 minutes, topping her previous course record of 32:36 from 2012. American Liz Stephen, who retired from skiing this past spring, holds the third-fastest time of 32:53.9. (Screenshot: NRK broadcast)
The 30-year-old Johaug won Thursday’s rollerski hill climb in a record time of 31 minutes, 46.3 seconds, while Sweden’s Charlotte Kalla finished 1:47.5 minutes back in second.
Kalla, 31, won last year’s Lysebotn Opp in 33:18.3, telling NRK at the time that “it’s been long since I’ve been in this good a shape in July.” Kalla’s 2017/2018 season went on to be one of her best. She racked up 10 individual wins, including a gold medal in the Olympic skiathlon.
If Kalla is using her the past year and half as a springboard for the upcoming season, Johaug might be considered the antithesis to the Swede. The year and half competition bar behind her, Johaug appears ready to move forward.
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned from all this, it’s that you should never rely on anyone, period,” Johaug told Newsinenglish.no. “It’s terrible, but that’s the way it is.”
Following Johaug and Kalla on Thursday, Sweden’s Ebba Andersson claimed the third spot on the podium, finishing 3.9 seconds behind her compatriot Kalla and 1:51.4 behind Johaug.
Norway’s Haga Ragnhild placed fourth (+2:21.6) and Ingvild Flugstad Østberg was fifth (+2:48.9), Austria’s Teresa Stadlober finished sixth (+3:05.7), Russia’s Yulia Belorukova seventh (+3:52.4), Norway’s Kari Øyre Slind eighth (+4:05.0), and Russia’s Elena Soboleva ninth (+4:14.1) and Yana Kirpichenko 10th (+4:26.2). Finland’s Krista Parmakoski finished exactly ten seconds outside the top ten in 11th (+4:36.2). Forty-seven women finished the senior women’s race.
Norway’s Simen Hegstad Krüger winning the 2018 Lysebotn Opp hill climb, part of the Blink rollerski festival, on Thursday. (Screenshot: NRK broadcast)
In the senior men’s Lysebotn Opp that followed, two Norwegians battled up front, with reigning Olympic skiathlon champ Simen Hegstad Krüger ultimately winning the race for the first time in 27:53.2. Another national team member and 2018 Olympian (and last year’s Lysebotn Opp winner), Hans Christer Holund finished 3.9 seconds back for second place, and Norway swept the podium with Simen Andreas Sveen in third (+16.0).
Rounding out the top 10 were Norwegians Vebjørn Turtveit in fourth (+51.7), Martin Johnsrud Sundby in fifth (+52.6), France’s Clement Parisse in sixth (+1:12.4), Norway’s Henrik L’Abée-Lund in seventh (+1:21.1), France’s Adrien Backscheider in eighth (+1:24.7), Russia’s Artem Maltsev in ninth (+1:31.4) and Canada’s Alex Harvey in 10th (+2:02.1).
Past winners of the Lysebotn Opp rollerski hill climb in Lysebotn, Norway. Simen Hegstad Krüger’s winning time on Thursday was third fastest on record at 27:53.2. (Screenshot: NRK broadcast)
The 7.5-kilometer race course for the Lysebotn Opp, an annual hill climb at the Blink Ski Festival in Lysebotn, Norway. (Photo: Blink Ski Festival/ Facebook)
There’s a little more than six months to go until the opening ceremony of the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics. For the recently turned 30-year-old Charlotte Kalla, a two-time Olympic gold medalist and three-time silver medalist from Sweden, nothing would be sweeter than to capture another gold this winter in South Korea.
Her last individual Olympic win came in 2010 in Vancouver, B.C., when she took first in the women’s 10-kilometer freestyle. A repeat podium in the PyeongChang 10 k skate is not far from her thoughts.
“It is a race that is certainly on my mind,” Kalla told NRK on Thursday, according to a translation.
What better way for Sweden’s 10 k favorite to practice than at the Blink Ski Festival’s Lysebotn Opp, an annual 7.5 k freestyle rollerski hill climb in Lysebotn, Norway? With names sure to contest her at the Olympics –including Norway’s Marit Bjørgen and Heidi Weng, as well as Finland’s Krista Pärmäkoski, Germany’s Stefanie Böhler and American Liz Stephen — on the start list for Thursday’s race, Kalla couldn’t resist entering herself.
Sweden’s Charlotte Kalla (r) racing to the win in the Lysebotn Opp, a 7.5-kilometer uphill climb, at the 2017 Blink Ski Festival on Thrusday in Lysbotn, Norway. (Photo: Axelar/Arild Aarnes)
If her performance in the rollerski race is any indication of where Kalla is headed this winter, it’s the direction she wants. After breaking away with Bjørgen, Pärmäkoski and Weng early on in the race to form a lead pack of four women, Kalla quickly decided to make the race her own.
Within the next few kilometers, Kalla dropped the two Norwegians and Pärmäkoski and went on to finish first in a time of 33 minutes, 18.3 seconds. Weng followed 40.3 seconds later and Bjørgen crossed in third, 1 minute and 50.5 seconds back.
Notably, Kalla’s time was faster than 57 out of 100 elite men that raced the same 7.5 k course later on Thursday.
“One shouldn’t focus too much on what happens in July, there is a lot left to be done before the season, but it’s been long since I’ve been in this good a shape in July. The last time was probably 2013,” Kalla told NRK.
The Lysebotn Opp’s 2014 champion,Stephen finished sixth overall (+3:35.7) on Thursday, after Norway’s Ragnhild Haga in fourth (+2:43.4) and Pärmäkoski in fifth (+2:47.0). Prior to winning three years ago, Stephen also placed third in the famous rollerski hill climb in 2012 (the Lysebotn Opp was added to the festival in 2010).
In the men’s 7.5 k uphill race that followed, Hans Christer Holund broke away for the win in 27:37.6, besting fellow Norwegian Simen Hegstad Krüger in second (+1:13.9) and Finland’s Matti Heikkinen in third (1:25.6).
Holund took it out strong from the start, holding his lead through the climb’s entirety.
Norway’s Hans Christer Holund after winning the men’s 7.5-kilometer Lysebotn Opp rollerski hill climb on Thursday at the 2017 Blink Ski Festival in Lysebotn, Norway. (Photo: NRK screenshot)
“I am healthy and have done some solid training this summer,” the 28-year-old Holund told NRK after. “It looks promising. There’s still a lot of time Olympics, but it does look promising. It is so competitive in Norway and it’s tough to just be selected. If I am selected for the Olympics when the time comes then I will be good enough and then an Olympic gold-medal is the next task.”
Norway occupied seven of the top eight on Thursday, with Henrik L’Abée-Lund in fourth (+1:59.6), Sjur Røthe in fifth (+2:05.7), Martin Johnsrud Sundby (Wednesday’s 60 k winner) in sixth (+2:11), Simen Andreas Sveen in seventh (+2:12.4), and Gaute Kvåle in eighth (+2:14.7).
Andy Newell of the U.S. Ski Team did not race the hill climb, but he was back for the 15 k mass start on Friday (as was Stephen for the women’s 10 k). Stay tuned for results in a separate report.
Defending Overall World Cup champion Martin Johnsrud Sundby won the first race of the 2017 Blink Ski Festival on Wednesday, finishing 2.6 seconds ahead of fellow Norwegian Simen Hegstad Krüger in the Blink Classics 60 k distance rollerski. (Photo: NRK screenshot)
Stands crowded with 50,000 cheering spectators. Bibbed athletes clad in shorts and T-shirts clicking by on rollerskis. Competitors representing various countries dousing themselves with bottled water as they cross the finish line.
These were among the sights and sounds of the world’s largest summer rollerski-race series, Norway’s Blink Ski Festival.
Celebrating its ninth year, racers and fans kicked off the 2017 four-day festival in Gjesdal and Sandnes, Norway, with men’s and women’s classic distance rollerski races on Wednesday.
Toeing the start line for the elite men’s 60-kilometer were well-known Norwegian World Cup racers, such as Martin Johnsrud Sundby, Petter Northug and Sjur Røthe, as well as Russia’s Sergey Ustiugov, Finland’s Iivo Niskanen, Germany’s Lucas Bögl, and American Andy Newell.
In the beginning, it appeared Ustiugov was gunning for the lead, charging the group of 58 rollerskiers with 46 k to go. But within another 9 k, a pack of six had broke off the front, including Sundby, Røthe, Niskanen, and Norwegians Øystein Pettersen, Simen Hegstad Krüger, Anders Aukland, and Simen Håkon Østensen. Ustiugov was now in the chase group close to 45 seconds away.
With less than 30 k of road left to race, the front group had dwindled to three Norwegians and a Finn: Sundby, Røthe, Krüger, and Niskanen. Newell had caught up to the chasing group, now almost two minutes back from the leaders.
Given 20 more kilometers, however, Sundby and Krüger had pulled away, Niskanen working to hold onto third 30 seconds back. The two Norwegians battled together until the final kilometer, when Sundby surged for the final city sprint to secure the victory in a time of 2:08:40.6.
Though some may see the win as a premature predictor of what’s to come this winter, Sundby was not one of them.
“We are talking about July. Everyone pretends like they don’t care, but this is important for everyone who is on the starting line,” Sundby told NRK, according to a translation. “There weren’t a lot of world-class athletes who was not on the starting line today.
“This is incredibly good practice,” he continued. “I greatly appreciate all of these competitions.”
Just 2.6 seconds behind Sundby, was Krüger crossing in second. Third went to Niskanen, who finished 36.7 seconds back from the winner.
Just 1.8 seconds outside of the top 15 was Newell in 16th overall (+5:25.1) in the elite men’s race, out of 58 finishers.
In the elite women’s 60 k, which started at the same time as the men, Norway’s Astrid Øyre Slind latched onto a few male racers from the start and broke away from her competition, which included just 10 women.
Slind took the win in a time of 2:20:04.2, while fellow Norwegian Kari Vikhagen Gjeitnes claimed second, 2:11.1 minutes back. Belarus’s Yulia Tikhonova completed the women’s podium in third (+2:23.4).
Racing continued Thursday with the men’s and women’s hill climb, the Lysebotn Opp, in Lysebotn, Norway. Sixty-five women came out for that race, with Sweden’s Charlotte Kalla taking the victory in 33:18.3. Norway’s Heidi Weng finished 40.3 seconds back in second, and Marit Bjørgen wearing bib 1 finished third, 1:50.5 minutes behind Kalla.
Liz Stephen of the U.S. Ski Team took sixth (+3:35.7) behind Norway’s Ragnhild Haga (+2:43.4) in fourth and Finland’s Krista Pärmäkoski in fifth (+2:47).
In the men’s race, Norway’s Hans Christer Holund took the win in 27:37.6. Krüger repeated in second place, 1:13.9 minutes back, and Finland’s Matti Heikkinen placed third (+1:25.6), while Sundby was sixth (+2:11.5) behind fellow Norwegians Henrik L’Abée-Lund in fourth and Røthe in fifth.
Out of 100 male starters, 99 finished. Newell did not compete.
Check back Friday for a more detailed recap of Thursday’s Lysebotn Opp.
Tord Asle Gjerdalen (l) and Britta Johansson Norgren (r) after winning the 2016 Marcialonga 70 k classic. In July, Johansson Norgren won the Blink Classics 60 k rollerski race — but received only 20 percent as much prize money as Petter Northug got for winning the men’s race. (Photo: Visma Ski Classics)
At the end of July, Norwegian professional cross-country skier Astrid Øyre Slind hit the podium in the new 60-kilometer classic race at her country’s Blink ski festival. She faced a payout that seemed unusual: a big discrepancy between men’s and women’s prize money.
The American Birkebeiner pays $7,500 to both the men’s and women’s winners.
But Blink Classics is not one of these established marathons: it is a rollerski competition in its very first year of existence. It did, however, attract the attention of the Norwegian government, which was concerned that the festival was violating the country’s equal pay act.
“For us it has not been easy to have this situation with the girls,” Blink Festival press secretary Arne Idland told FasterSkier. “And then when they are not satisfied with the money it is really difficult. We will try as hard as we can to find a solution.”
Seraina Boner (l) of Switzerland and Team Coop and Petter Eliassen of Norway and Team LeasePlan Go won the 2015 Årefjällsloppet, receiving equal payouts. (Photo: Ski Classics)
New Race for a Booming Festival
The Blink ski festival is now a giant on the summer racing circuit, with athletes from all over Europe and even North America coming to compete on rollerskis in cross-country skiing, biathlon, and the famous Lysebotn Opp hill climb. Recreational and junior classes are also a big focus, making it accessible to fans and professionals alike.
But adding a long-distance race to the mix was not easy for organizers, who still have to make sure that the festival breaks even financially. Idland explained that Blink Classics had been in the works for three years.
“The main challenge this year is that we, for the first time, were going into car traffic — this race was on ordinary roads with traffic [rather than the city square], and we had to close it to traffic just like they do in cycling races,” he explained.
That entailed paying for policemen, for one thing. Having a fourth day of racing (previously there had been three, the Lysebotn Opp and two more days in the Sandnes city center) also meant more production by NRK, Norwegian national television, as it followed a long-distance race rather than staying in a set location downtown.
“If you have live production it has to be in high definition,” Idland said. “Then it’s really expensive.”
Then last autumn came the news from the Norwegian Ski Federation: none of the national team “A” or “B” team women would compete in the 60 k. The women usually focus on doing all three of the other days of racing, and adding a 60 k at the beginning of consecutive days of racing would be too much volume and intensity during the summer training season. Some of the men, like Eirik Brandsdal and Sjur Rothe, would do the longer race; Martin Johnsrud Sundby was interested but later pulled out.
Concurrently, Idland said, NRK was telling the Blink organizers that it wouldn’t be possible to broadcast the men’s and women’s 60 k competitions together. It would have meant following two races at the same time — double the filming budget and staffing — and deciding all the time which feed to broadcast and commentate. NRK didn’t have expertise in doing this and said that they needed to develop it. So they would only broadcast one, and with the national team women out of the competition but the national team men in it, organizers agreed it should be the men’s race.
“When I contacted the teams from other nations, I was open and said that this [women’s] long distance race will not be broadcast on TV and no women from the national team would start there,” Idland said of his communication with other countries’ teams last winter, before registration began. “So I advised them all not to start in this race, but to come do the three other races.”
Johansson Norgren, the winner, is a mainstay on the Visma Ski Classics circuit and won the 2016 season title as well as numerous individual marathons. Masako Ishida, who finished third at Blink Classics, was the winter series’ fourth-ranked woman. So the podium at Blink was not so different than a podium one might see at a top winter event.
But the decision about prize money had been made long before.
“We said that we need good prize money on the men’s side, because the other competitions that we compare with have good prize money,” Idland said. “We also need some sprint primes. We had a total of 190,000 kroner, or about 20,000 Euros, for the men. And we had just over 5,000 [Euros] for the women. That was decided before we opened entry.”
Even for the women, it was more prize money than was available at the other competitions in the Blink festival, Idland said. In those other races, prize money is equal for men and women and each total prize-money purse is roughly 2,000 Euros.
“So it is double amount of money in this women’s class in any of the other races, including Lysebotn Opp,” he said. “We thought we were really doing well for the women. And it’s not every rollerski race having prize money, either.”
Finland’s Kaisa Mäkäräinen climbs to victory in the Lysebotn hill climb at the 2013 Blink festival as a cameraman captures the action. The women’s hill climb is televised, unlike the Blink Classics. (Photo: blinkfestivalen.no)
Building Women’s Pro Fields Takes Time
But the discrepancy still felt unusual to some of the women, who are used to getting paid the same amount as their male counterparts for a win.
The gulf between men’s and women’s participation is greater in long-distance racing than on the World Cup. As a result, marathon organizers have to grapple with a somewhat different set of considerations as they develop the payout structure for their competitions.
Most of the biggest ski marathons in Europe — including the Birkebeiner, Vasaloppet, and Marcialonga — are part of the Visma Ski Classics series, where organizers have come up with compromise solution when it comes to year-end rankings.
Prize money is equal for the top three overall series finishers, but the men’s field also pays out to the fourth- and fifth-place athletes while the women’s field does not.
“For me it sounds very strange,” Visma Ski Classics CEO David Nilsson told FasterSkier in an interview last week referring to the Blink prizes. “We have in our rules that they must have the same first prize to men and women. It is also important to reflect on the percentage [of field size], and it shouldn’t be so much more difficult for the men to get [prize money] than for the women — but you can never do more than win, so of course that has to be equal for first place.”
In the winter, far fewer women than men are on Visma Ski Classics professional teams. But women’s races are hotly contested and often extremely dramatic, like Seraina Boner’s come-from-behind win at the 2016 Birkebeiner after passing Ishida and Poland’s Justyna Kowalczyk in the final kilometers.
In the 2016 season, 39 different women scored points toward the overall titles. There is even an all-women’s pro team, Sweden’s Team SkiProAm, whose top athlete finished eighth in the season rankings.
According to Nilsson, Visma Ski Classics has carefully tried to promote women’s participation, with equal prize money for first place being one component.
“We worked very hard on this,” he said. “When I started 6-7 years ago, we had 4-5 women that were competing [professionally] in long distance skiing because it was a bigger step for them from shorter distance [World Cup] skiing than for the men.”
While they left the women’s competition out of the spotlight this year, the Blink Classics organizers don’t think that should always be the case. Like the Visma Ski Classics, they want more women on the start line.
“Our aim and our goal is also to have the world’s best women at the start in future,” Idland said.
One reason for low numbers at Blink might be that long-distance racing just isn’t as popular among women in Norway as it is in neighboring Sweden, home of the Visma Ski Classics brand, said Nilsson.
“In Norway, which we all know is very strong in cross-country skiing, we don’t see so many female participants in long-distance skiing,” he mused. “They are more from Sweden. We don’t know why the Norwegian women are not coming more.”
The Blink 60 k is part of a three-race series of long-distance rollerski competitions called the World Classic Tour. Indeed, the second leg of the Tour was held in Sweden. Called the Alliansloppet, it is also a more established event.
Twenty-five women finished that 48 k race, including several past Visma Ski Classics champions and members of the Swedish national team (Hanna Falk, a three-time World Cup podium finisher, won the race). Prize money was equal for men and women, including a 10,000 Swedish kroner sprint prize ($1,000) for both men and women.
The World Classic Tour overall awards use a similar idea to the Visma Ski Classics, in that the men’s and women’s title winners earn equal paychecks but the men’s field will pay out to six places and the women’s to just three.
Yet the series does not appear to have a policy for its constituent races in how to organize prize money at individual competitions.
If organizers like those at the Blink festival want to develop a strong women’s competition, Nilsson suggested that they need to actually promote the women’s races.
“We also made sure that there was much more focus on the women [than there had been before],” he said of the Visma Ski Classics efforts. “The women should have be starting [wave] before the men to have their own competition… and have [television] production of the race and their own media. When we created the system, all the attention was on the men. Then we made it so the pro teams had to get points from both the men’s and the women’s classes. This together has made the increase of the women.”
Idland conceded that with more prize money, they might have drawn a slightly larger women’s field. But he believed the circumstances of the festival, with the three subsequent days of racing, were the bigger reason for low participation.
On the Blink Festival website, the news story about the 60 k Classics race features five paragraphs and three photos about the men’s race, but only one paragraph and one photo of the women.
Nilsson believed that some changes could be made without disrespecting the male athletes.
“When you have 100 men and not so many women registered, it wouldn’t be fair to get the same [prizes],” Nilsson said. “It would be easier for the women. So it has been for us to push the development [of women’s skiing] but not to be unfair to the men’s skiers. That’s the reason we have in the prize money, five men and three women. And that reflects a little bit to the female factor, to be honest, in terms of the number of participants and the amount of professional skiers. It has to be the same difficulty to win a prize in both categories.”
What Does Equality Mean?
Race organizers are continuously trying to come to a more perfect solution, and one common thread seems to be that prize money must be earned by quality racing and exciting performances. Until the women’s fields are deemed to have provided that, they might not see as much compensation.
Visa Ski Classics, for example, continues to make changes. For the 2016/2017 season, women will for the first time be able to vie for a sprint title, worth five percent of the total prize money, just as the men have done for years.
“The reason it wasn’t the case [previously] is that there weren’t so many women — last year was the first time that there was really a group at the front,” Nilsson said. “Before it was just one or two who went away, so it wouldn’t have been interesting. The same people would have won the race as the sprint bibs. Now both men and women get a sprint bib, which is a step forward. Our goal is to make it equal the number of participants and who gets prizes.”
Nilsson guessed that the availability of intermediate prize money may also change the tactics of the women’s races and contribute to an exciting spectacle on television.
For his part, Idland insisted that the Blink organizers’ decision about prize money was not sexism. It could have gone the other way, he wrote in a letter to the Norwegian government explaining the discrepancy in pay.
“I was trying to give an example with the opposite situation,” Idland said. “If Marit [Bjørgen], Therese [Johaug], Heidi [Weng], Charlotte [Kalla], and maybe some of the Americans said to us that this race we would very much like to do, and the men said they didn’t want to do it and just let the [marathon] specialists do it, then I am quite sure we would have done the opposite thing. We would have led the coverage with the women, if the level was higher.”
After being contacted by the authorities, the Blink Festival is trying to work together with the government to achieve equality.
“Our answer was that they would really much like to come in dialogue with us to try to make a plan for the future,” Idland said. “And that we try to build up this competition with a clear aim to have everything on an equal basis in some number of years.”
Norway’s Heidi Weng en route to the win in the Lysebotn Opp rollerski hill climb on Thursday. (Photo: Blinkfestivalen.no/Instagram)
Last year Heidi Weng felt that she didn’t quite pace it right on the Lysebotn Opp, a grueling seven kilometer rollerski race that rises 2,000 feet in southwestern Norway.
With a nine percent grade lasting the entire race, going out too hard can result in a lot of pain – even more than nailing the pacing, which is a world of hurt in its own right.
So this year, Weng started a bit more conservatively in the first competition of the Blink Festival, an annual nordic sports extravaganza. That allowed the Norwegian cross-country ski star to pick up the pace partway through and float away from her nearest competition, Finnish biathlete Kaisa Mäkäräinen, who finished 30 seconds back.
“I opened a little better this year,” Weng told Norwegian news service Dagbladet. “I didn’t have the ‘Duracell bunny’ [Therese] Johaug here. She tends to go fast from start to finish. The rest of us have to start a little more sensibly to get ourselves into the race.”
Stephen poses for a photo with Heidi Weng after the 2013 Blink festival. (Courtesy photo.)
Indeed, her teammate Johaug, routinely the best climber in the final ascent of the Tour de Ski, was sitting out with a broken hand. Also absent was last year’s winner, Liz Stephen of the U.S. Ski Team, who recently returned from a training camp in New Zealand and chose not to venture a few more time zones in the opposite direction after arriving home.
Weng’s time was a minute and 20 seconds slower than Stephen’s winning pace from last year, but it was almost a minute faster than Weng’s own fifth-place performance from 2014.
That made her happy.
“The body functioned clearly better this year than last year, so the question is whether it is a good sign for me,” she told Aftenbladet. “I hope that all the training I’ve put so far should give good results when the ski season begins.”
Weng finished third in the overall World Cup last season behind teammates Marit Bjørgen and Johaug. With Bjørgen taking the upcoming season off to have a baby, Weng is looking to improve on her 13 podiums from 2015, and maybe to take her first World Cup win.
Mäkäräinen, who won the Lysebotn Opp in 2013 and finished third last year, was on the podium yet again. The biathlete, who finished second in the overal World Cup rankings last season, led a group of Finnish skiers across the line: Laura Mononen finished third, Kerttu Niskanen fourth, and Aino Kaisa Saarinen fifth.
Sprint specialist Ingvild Flugstad Østberg was the next Norwegian, finishing sixth.
Kaisa Makarainen leading Heidi Weng partway through the race. (Photo: Matthias Ahrens)
A trio of North Americans also competed: Canadian biathletes Rosanna Crawford and Megan Heinicke, and American Susan Dunklee. All three have been in Norway for the last week for a shooting camp of international athletes, including Makarainen, organized by Canadian coach Matthias Ahrens and Norwegian shooting specialist Joar Himle.
Dunklee finished 21st in the hill climb last year.
“This year I was familiar with the course layout, including landmarks like the kilometer-long tunnel and the switchbacks in the last 500 meters,” she wrote in an email Thursday evening. “It still felt like a pain cave, but a controlled pain cave. I tried to think about keeping my weight on my toes, switching a lot between V1 and V2 and only looking ahead to one switchback at a time.”
This year Dunklee finished 15th in 38:49, outsprinting Finnish skier Anne Kylloenen at the line.
The Canadians had not previously made the trip to the Blink festival.
“The biggest shock was the 1km long tunnel, that took about 9 minutes I think, dark and slippery and hard to pass people,” Crawford explained in an email.
This type of event wouldn’t usually be her forté – “hill climbing has never been my strong front” – but Crawford enjoyed testing her fitness against the rest of the world’s best.
Crawford and Heinicke finished 30th and 33rd in 41:44 and 42:16, respectively.
“Makes me happy we don’t have 40 minute straight uphill biathlon races!” she wrote. It’s a lot harder than our Norquay races, which is about 5k and average 7-8% I think. Much longer than any hill climb we could find around Canmore. I’m always working on my climbing so I looked at it as a great opportunity to keep getting fitter!”
Racing continues Friday and Saturday, and the North Americans plan to race through the festival.
Not so for Weng.
“I’m going to a wedding on Saturday and then I simply can’t do several races this weekend,” she told Aftenposten. “It’s a little silly, because I like it so much here at these competitions in Lysebotn and Sandnes. But sometimes different worlds collide.”
But even at Blink, ostensibly a race festival, social time collides with sport.
“I especially enjoyed the boat ride [back across the fjord] today, it was a great opportunity to socialize,” Dunklee wrote. “In general all the athletes are very relaxed compared to the winter and happy to chat.”
This coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. Learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award—or about supporting FasterSkier coverage—by contacting info@fasterskier.com. 
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![Tord Asle Gjerdalen (l) and Britta Johansson-Norgren (r) after winning the 2016 Marcialonga 70 k classic. In July, Johansson Norgren won the Blink Classics 60 k rollerski race - but received only 20% as much prize money as Petter Northug got for winning the men's race. (Photo: Visma Ski Classics)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2016/08/unnamed-9.jpg")
![Seraina Boner (l) of Switzerland and Team Coop and Petter Eliassen of Norway and Team LeasePlan Go won the 2015 Årefjällsloppet, receiving equal paydays. (Photo: Ski Classics)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/04/Seraina-Boner-Petter-Eliassen-Årefjallsloppet-2015-Foto-Ski-Classics.jpg")
![Kaisa Mäkäräinen (FIN) climbs to victory in the Lysebotn hill climb at the 2013 Blink festival. The women's hill climb is televised, unlike the Blink Classics. (Photo: blinkfestivalen.no)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/08/Kaisa-Mäkäräinen-FIN-climbs-to-victory-in-the-Lysebotn-hill-climb-on-Thursday.-.jpg")
![Norway's Heidi Weng en route to the win in the Lysebotn Opp rollerski hill climb on Thursday. (Photo: Blinkfestivalen.no/Instagram)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/07/Screen-Shot-2015-07-30-at-7.34.03-PM.png")
![Stephen poses for a photo with Heidi Weng after the 2013 Blink festival. (Courtesy photo.)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/06/L-Stephen-3.jpg")
![Kaisa Makarainen leading Heidi Weng partway through the race. (Photo: Matthias Ahrens)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/07/IMG_83831.jpg")