Skiing the Norwegian Birkebeiner
By Jay Tegeder
(Reprinted with the permission of the author for exclusive use by xcskiworld.com.)
------
Part Two:
The Norwegian Ski Shops and Ski Federation
On Thursday morning, March 19th, Dave and I got up, ate some breakfast and watched Terje's tape of the Holmenkollen 50K from Saturday. The race alternates between classic and freestyle from year to year. Classic was the style for this season's event which is what the Norwegians prefer (tradition!). Alexi Prokurorov proved to be the "King for the Day" as he powered his way around the monstrous "5 mile" course (The Scandinavians refer to the 50K as the "Race of Kings" and the Norwegians also refer to the same event as the "5 mile"). Two young Norwegians, Odd-Bjorn Hjelmeseth and Anders Auckland had the race of their lives as they finished 2nd and 4th respectively, sandwiched around Bjorn Daehlie. They were extremely excited about their results since they have been fringe members of the Norwegian Ski Team for several years.
Next, Dave and I made our way into Oslo via the convenient train system. Terje gave us the names of a couple of the best ski shops in town. Our first stop was Bull Ski and Kajakk. As you walk in the door, you know you are in a fabulous shop. The store was stuffed with racks and racks of skis and clothing. About the same size as the New Moon Ski Shop in Hayward, Wisconsin, Bull Ski and Kajakk has four times as many skis and three times the amount of race clothing. Their ski selection included Fischer, Atomic, Morrotto, Madshus, Karhu and Peltonen. One of the salesmen told me that the best sellers were the Fischers and Madshus. The only waxless skis I found in the place were some Peltonen Zetas which are racing skis.
As for the clothing, they had tons of Bjorn Daehlie, Briko and Swix to choose from. There were several Briko designs including the same suit Smirnov wore in the 97/98 season. The Bjorn Daehlie line had three ski suits and there were four different color combinations of the standard Swix uniform. Moving on to wax, Swix had about three quarters of the shelf space with the rest being split between Star and Rode. Boots included Salomon, Alpina and Alpha. The pole selection included the typical Exel and Swix models. One other thing, they had lots of copies of Bjorn Daehlie's new book, "Gulljakten" (Gold Hunting). Written in Norwegian, the pictures are still worth the price of the book for non-Scandinavians.
Our next stop was A S Sportslager. This was another ski shop but they also sold bikes, soccer and hockey equipment. They had some great close-out items like Exel Avanti ski poles for the equivalent of $110 U.S. Dollars. Their ski and clothing section wasnÕt as large as Bull ski and Kajakk's but it was a nice shop. One of the big European sporting goods chains, Intersport, seemed to have a shop on every corner in Oslo. Intersports have a lot of different items but they donÕt specialize in anything specific.
After hitting the shops, Dave and I went over to the Norwegian Ski Federation which is housed in a large football (soccer) stadium. We walked in and met Eivind Sorlie (a former member of the University of Utah Ski Team), who is the Marketing Manager for the Federation. He told us that the new National Team Trainer, after the departure of Erik Roste, would be either Pal Gunnar Mikkelsplass or the former National Trainer, Inge Braaten (Mikkelsplass would later get the job). Dave and I spent some time there and I got my picture taken with the Nordic Combined World Cup Trophy. Then the secretary gave us some Norwegian Ski Team pins before we left.
