In Vu de Norge
Kristoffer Eriksen Sundal on the brink of disaster
Disaster! Ski jumping came close to a serious accident on Saturday during the men’s qualifications. As Kristoffer Eriksen Sundal was setting up on the run-up bar to jump, the advertising panel behind it slipped, hitting the bar and throwing the jumper forward .
Fortunately, the Norwegian reacted brilliantly and managed to take off, jump and land safely. Despite this, the jump was not validated. “Do I have to jump again? But it’s crazy, it could put someone in danger”, Sundal told NRK.
Nevertheless, the young Norwegian recovered to finish a brilliant 7th place in the day’s competition. “But I was very lucky, I raised my arms at just the right moment because if I hadn’t, my arm would have been caught between the bar and the panel, I would have been thrown forward and I could have been seriously injured”, he analyses.
“This type of incident shouldn’t happen. We’ll have to examine the events with the FIS and the Lillehammer organisation to understand what happened and make sure it doesn’t happen again,” commented Terje Lund, the Norwegian Ski Association’s event manager, at a press conference reported by Dagbladet.
“The organisers have apologised profusely, says Sundal. But there’s no need to make a big deal of it, everything turned out fine.” “He’s really strong mentally, he handled it brilliantly,” concludes his coach Magnus Brevig.
Johannes Høsflot Klæbo supporter of Les Bleus?
The friendship between Johannes Høsflot Klæbo and Lucas Chanavat is nothing new. The two cross-country skiers like to train together and did so again recently in Italy. The Norwegian was asked by the media if he would like to see the Frenchman beat his compatriots to the podium at the Trondheim Worlds. “In a way, yes,” Klæbo replied to the NRK microphone.
It was enough to annoy his coach, Arild Monsen. “He was really irritated, reveals the cross-country skier. But I explained to him that in fact my answer had been cut off…”. For his part, the coach of the sprint team insists that he took it with humour and surprise rather than anger.
Making amends, NRK published Klæbo’s full response: “I want everyone to be at their best and I think that if Lucas is, he can be on the podium, he said in Livigno. It’s true that we’d love to share a podium and that’s the goal of every sprinter in Trondheim, so we’ll see what happens.”
One thing’s for sure: French fans won’t be averse to a French sprint medal in Trondheim.
Johannes Høsflot Klæbo out of the national team again soon?
But this response to the national media has caused many people to react, incomplete or not, provoking a myriad of questions: Does Johannes Høsflot Klæbo feel comfortable in the national team? Does he get on well with his team-mates?
“Seeing these reactions poses a problem, Petter Northug Jr. told TV2. It was just another response in an interview, but it points to a much more important issue: there is perhaps irritation, resentment and disagreement between Klæbo and the others, because they are not doing the same thing at all.”
Northug believes that with Klæbo having plenty of room to manoeuvre, he may not be as close to his team-mates as he could be. “It’s likely to create a real challenge within the national team and we can already see that before the start of the season,” he says.
The former cross-country skier goes even further: for him, Klæbo’s future with the national team is more than uncertain , even though he has always said that it was the ideal solution for any cross-country skier. “He’s the best cross-country skier in the world, so obviously it suits the Ski Association if he stays with them, says Northug. But if Johannes continues to train on his own then I don’t see the point, the whole point of the national team is to train together to push each other and that’s not what’s happening at the moment.”
The Mosvik Express is categorical: his compatriot will not remain in the national team for more than two years before going it alone again, as he did in his day.
Therese Johaug is feeling a bit under the weather
After a two-year break, Therese Johaug will be making her World Cup comeback next weekend. But the month of October was more than complicated for the cross-country skier. “I was very tired, maybe a little virus from nursery school,” she told NRK. As a result, the Norwegian felt helpless.
“But at the same time, I know that top-level sport is all about ups and downs, and without the hard knocks, the good times just don’t have the same flavour,” continues Johaug.
The cross-country skier also explains that, since Kristin returned to school, she had tried to train twice between 8.30am and 4pm, making her recovery time far too short. “Fortunately, I know my body by now, so I pulled on the brake in a hurry as soon as I felt that it was getting to be too much, that my mental and physical load was too high,” she says.
And on top of that, her daughter was sleeping much less well, she admits to Dagbladet. To recover, Johaug went alone to her cabin in Sjusjøen, where she was able to train and sleep peacefully.
But none of this would be possible without her husband, former rower Nils Jakob Hoff. He has put his career as an anaesthetist on hold to help his other half. “I want to think about my career, but her dreams are my dreams too , and when you have Therese’s goals, you can’t do things by halves, so we had to make arrangements,” Hoff tells NRK.
He once found her very unwell after a session on the treadmill, very tired and above all angry with herself. “We had a chat, cleared the air and decided on a plan of action, continues the Norwegian. The next day, I asked the hospitalfor a holiday and my paternity leave so that she could concentrate on skiing until March.”
Johaug’s career would then have come to an end. “I’m never sure of anything with her, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she carried on for another year and went to the Olympics,” joked her husband, who nonetheless warned the cross-country skier that he wanted to concentrate on her professional future from next year.
A team effort that is paying off, given Therese Johaug’s results in Beitostølen last weekend, when only Heidi Weng managed to beat her in a competition.
Amnesty Norway denounces Norwegian jumpers
Norwegian ski jumping is in trouble with its sponsors, not least after a number of high-profile affairs that have given the team a bad image.
Since 2010, one of the team’s main sponsors has been Nammo and, far from having withdrawn, the company has decided to offer more money to the jumpers, who now wear their logo on their helmets.
The problem? Nammo is an arms company, so their logo features a bullet. “It’s in very bad taste to have a bullet in the middle of your skull, given the number of wars going on in the world at the moment,” Amnesty Norway told NRK.
When asked, the Norwegian jumpers did not hesitate to give their opinion. “Everyone should be allowed to express their opinion on this subject, says Halvor Egner Granerud. On the other hand, I’m not ashamed to wear the Nammo logo. It’s a leading Norwegian company that helps NATO and defends our country. They have also helped our team a lot, not least in terms of aerodynamic development.”
While Nammo produces most of the munitions used by NATO, some are also sold to the United States. NGOs and journalists then discovered that Nammo’s American buyers were reselling these weapons to countries such as Israel, provoking controversy in Norway. “Our products, including the fuel we produce, have helped save the lives of Ukrainians, and they also guarantee the security of all the Nordic countries. We have nothing to reproach ourselves for, and our links with Israel are almost non-existent,” replied Nammo’s directors.
The Norwegian Palestine Committee spoke of a lack of tact. “Palestinian sportsmen and women can no longer train or compete, soto see athletes displaying this logo is, at best, tactless and dismissive”, says the group. “I’m ashamed for my country,” adds former jumper Olav Gjøystdal, a member of the Committee.
The NRK ski jumping experts, for their part, can’t help but say on live TV that the national ski jumping team could have anticipated this debate. “They’re well aware that controversy can quickly erupt, they’ve been through it recently, but they don’t seem to have learned anything,” concludes Jan Petter Saltvedt.
Didrik Tønseth is no longer up for grabs
In 2023, Didrik Tønseth separated from his girlfriend and team-mate Anne Kjersti Kalvå. The cross-country skier then suffered a series of setbacks, including falling quite seriously ill in the autumn. “But I have to say that I’m pretty happy at the moment,” he tells the media outlet Nettavisen. The reason? The cross-country skier recently found love again.
The lucky lady’s name is Lone Møller Solrud, but Tønseth refused to reveal how they met. “With the exception of the illness, I’m doing very well, and it’s very nice to be happy again in my personal life,” continues the Norwegian.
An optimist, he is also making progress on the sporting front and claims to be gradually returning to his highest level each week. In fact, he had two top 20 finishes this weekend at Beitostølen. Maybe not mind-blowing, but far from totally catastrophic.
