SKI-O WOC

Ski Orienteering World Championships 2005

Levi, Finland (5th - 11th March)

Melissa Thomas’ story starts a week before the Ski Orienteering World Champs, when she jumped on a plane headed for Tampere, Finland. The actual championships were held in Levi, a ski resort north of the artic circle. Her Irish mountain biking buddy, Nina Phillips, had been living in Tampere since January, so Melissa joined her there for a little bit of skiing practice.

IN preparation for the upcoming World Champs, we thought it was best to at least try out ski orienteering, so we entered a two day event half way between Tampere and Helisinki. I’ve raced some cross country ski races, and I know how to orienteer, so how hard can this be?’ I thought naively. I was about to discover ski singletrack (keep in mind that all my skiing until this point had been on nice, wide groomed trails!). First imagine you have slipperyslidey 1.93m long planks attached to both feet. Now imagine you are faced with a tiny little track, less than 1m wide, lined with trees, rocks and an assortment of other hard objects to crash into. Needless to say, I made good friends with some trees and figured out that once you are stuck in a tree, the only way out is to reverse exactly the way you came. Any other extraction method resulted in getting more tangled, and entertaining still more people as they skied by, all upright and going the right direction. It was at this stage that I first realised what I’d gotten myself into; it was going to be a lot tougher than I’d imagined!

So the next 5 days were filled with skiing practice; Nina and I heading out on our skis, looking for the smallest, worst looking trails we could find (and ignoring the plethora of lovely smooth groomed trails!). Along the way, I kept discovering important things about surviving European winter - one of which was to make sure your hair was completely dry before heading outside (I have never given this a second thought until now!). But it really is quite interesting to have frozen hair; there is an irresistable urge to snap some off... (which by the way, I managed not to succumb to; it all thawed out, nicely intact!). Throughout the week I continued in my tradition of learning a bunch of useless words in a foreign language - my Finnish vocabulary expanded to include important words such as hovercraft, oxygen, asparagus and sleeping bag. I can’t ask ‘Where does the bus go?’, but if you need to enquire about jellyfish whilst in Finland, I can help with that! Left: The number vests were made specifically for Ski-O; at this stage I was still devising exactly how to pin the plastic bag to my tummy... Right: Somehow it made me feel much more normal to have the pizza board contraption protruding from my chest like everyone else!

Anyway, getting side-tracked. After an epic 10hr train journey north, we arrived in Levi to find surprisingly warm temperatures of -6ºC. Unfortunately this gradually dropped throughout the week; the morning we left it was a chilly -25ºC! Nearly all the teams (there were twenty nations competing) had accommodation in the same hotel, which was brilliant for getting to know everyone. One of the joys of being the only Aussie was that I was immediately adopted into the ‘we-don’t-have-a-full-team-so-lets-all-be-friends’ Team, a nice Irish/Hungarian/Danish/Aussie mix! The German and Swiss teams were also fun to chat with and gave me a chance to practice my sub-standard German skills (although after being told that my German was ‘special’; I wasn’t so sure whether I should keep on trying!).

The opening ceremony was brilliant, although a little chilly (I found out the hard way that the cold can still penetrate through six layers of clothing!), with the highlight being a spectacular fireworks display at the end. I was quite surprised to find Australia was second in the line up; ‘Someone should teach those Finnish how to spell!’ we were thinking. Afterwards someone made the connection that French spelling had been used to order the teams (‘Allemagne’ is the French word for Germany), however it did seem a little odd considering the absence of anything French at the Champs (including a team!).

The first race was the Sprint distance, and I have to admit I haven’t been so nervous (and scared!) in a long time. We even had to use those start gate contraptions you see in downhill ski races - I was a bit worried I’d end up tripping myself, but thankfully it wasn’t too hard. I even managed to forget it was there, probably because I was otherwise occupied trying to get the map into my map-holder without poking an official in the eye with my pole! I wasn’t used to my thick gloves and the resulting inability to do anything involving fine motor skills - 15 seconds just didn’t seem like enough to get the map into the contraption strapped to my chest! Here I have to say a big thank you to the Swiss Team, who allowed me to use their spare map-holder for the Sprint race (after a chat over dinner, when conversation releaved that my plan was to use safety pins to attach a plastic bag to my stomach!). Also, big thanks to Eike Bruns from Germany, who ended up giving me his old map-holder for the remaining races, and saved me from the embarrassment of having a plastic bag safety-pinned to my belly! For that I am eternally grateful.

Anyway, back to the race. The snow was particularly soft, making conditions slow for everyone. The biggest difficulty was managing to get any sort of traction with your poles; they would just disappear deep into the snow, making the uphills even more difficult.

So after gracefully ploughing into a tree in front of the camera at the final control I arrived at the finish all in one piece, although

Leg 6-7 in the Women’s Sprint Distance race. The navigation was quite similar to mountain bike orienteering, and owing to my somewhat subdued skiing speed I had no problems finding controls. However, managing to stop in time to punch them was another story!

with a little more snow on me than everyone else seemed to have.. Yay, I made it! My excitement was soon replaced by apprehension as I realised the next day I faced the long race - 18km of ‘steep’ terrain (the 3.6km sprint race had been described as ‘flat’). OK, apprehension is the wrong word. I’ll tell you the truth - I was flat out scared. Why did I decide to do this?

But I needn’t have worried; the long race actually ended up being one of my favourites! I managed to reach the goals I had set myself - finish in less than twice the winners time in every race. My best result was probably the long race; 34th (43 starters), although I have to admit to taking off my skis and running up the steep skinny trails, it just wasn’t worth me filling my ears with snow trying to ski them!

One funny story (but slightly embarrassing for me, I’m not sure why I’m telling you this!) was during the long race, which consisted of two big loops followed by a small one. I had just gone through the map change the final time (so only a couple of km’s to go!) and as I skiied out, I noticed a Japanese girl coming in! That made me rather excited as I wasn’t really expecting to be ahead of anyone, so I skiied off, trying to go fast.. Anyway, on my way to the next control I decided to take off my skis and run up the steep single trail - it was less than 100m to the control, so I thought it’d be OK... I got most of the way there, I could see the control 20m away, but started sinking into the snow, above my knees! So there was nothing else I could do - I crawled through the snow to the checkpoint! By this stage I was rather embarrassed and was very much hoping that the Japanese girl wouldn’t catch me; I wasn’t sure what I would do if she discovered me lying on the ground, pulling myself towards the control! But all was well, I made it before she arrived, slid back down the slope, put on my skis and kept going!

By the end of the week, I had a good technique going - on the single trail I would just let myself go (the trails weren’t wide enough to snowplough!), try to stay upright; then if I had to turn at a junction, I would make myself fall over a bit before (momentum would mean that hopefully I’d come to a halt in a pile at the track junction!), then get up, change direction and ski off happily down my track! I even had my own Aussie cheer squad - a couple from Melbourne living in the town nearby had heard an Aussie was racing, so they came to cheer me on, which was great!

In conclusion I have to say the whole experience was just fantastic. The races were brilliant, I learnt a lot, had heaps of fun and made a bunch of new friends from all over the world. What can I say? Let me practice a whole heap more on those little single trails, then bring on next year!

Start of the womens relay. It was compulsory to stay in the classic tracks until you passed the red line, then you were free to ski away however you pleased - in my case, skating technique with a somewhat lower level of finesse than the other competitors! Melissa punching at the spectator control.

Sprint Distance

MEN (3.9km, 63 competitors): 1 Matti Keskinarkaus FIN 12.01, 2 Bertil Nordqvist SWE 12.02, 3 Tobias Aslund SWE 12.03 WOMEN (3.6km, 44 competitors): 1 Stine Hjermstad-Kirkevik NOR 13.16, 2 Erja Jokinen FIN 13.18, 3 Katja Rajaniemi FIN 13.33,

40 Melissa Thomas AUS 24.57 Long Distance

MEN (25.5km, 59 competitors): 1 Eduard Khrennikov RUS 1.35.02, 2 Andrei Gruzdev RUS 1.35.15, 3 Jukka Lanki FIN 1.35.24 WOMEN (18.1km, 43 competitors): 1 Tatiana Vlasova RUS 1.14.08, 2 Natalia Tomilova RUS 1.15.00, 3 Olga Shevchenko RUS 1.15.05, 34

Melissa Thomas AUS 2.18.21

MEN (12.7km, 63 competitors): 1 Ruslan Gritsan RUS 40.53, 1 Andrei Gruzdev RUS 40.53, 3 Eduard Khrennikov RUS 41.13 WOMEN (10.1km, 43 competitors): 1 Tatiana Vlasova RUS 37.22, 2 Erja Jokinen FIN 37.27, 3 Stine Hjermstad-Kirkevik NOR 38.22, 3 Stina Grenholm SWE 38.22, 41 Melissa Thomas AUS

1.13.22 Relay

MEN (7.7km/leg): 1 RUS 1.15.49, 2 FIN 1.16.20, 3 SWE 1.18.23 WOMEN (6.0km/leg): 1 NOR 1.17.11, 2 SWE 1.17.50, 3 FIN 1.18.16 (AUS, 1 leg only,

47.37)

For a list of full results, pictures, etc. check out the website: www.skiwoc2005.org/

Russian Eduard Khrennikov won Gold in the Long and Bronze in the Middle Distance.

Erja Jokinen FIN. Silver in the Sprint and Middle-distance events.

Antje Bornhak (Germany) won a bronze medal in the 2004 MTB-O WOC in Australia. She is also an accomplished skier, finishing 7th in the 2004 German SkiO Champs. Men’s Middle-distance gold medallist Ruslan Gritsan of Russia

Stine Hjermstad-Kirkevik NOR. Gold in the Sprint and Bronze in the Middle.