Entries Tagged as 'Cross-Country Skiing'
Tarquin Cooper of The Daily Telegraph is planning to join 12 Royal Marines on a 700-mile cross-country ski journey across Norway, ostensively to “retrace the route taken by Norwegian commandos before their raid on a Nazi atomic weapons factory, a story immortalised in the Kirk Douglas film The Heroes of Telemark…” Good luck to him.
“To knock me into shape, I’m put in the hands of a fellow member of the team, 51-year-old Bernie, who trains the likes of Formula One drivers Jenson Button and Mark Webber, and Olympic cycling and rowing medallist Rebecca Romero.”
“We meet at his training centre at Sandbanks, Poole, the exclusive enclave beloved by footballers and millionaires. Unfortunately, no luxuries await – just an old-fashioned Royal Marine cold-weather initiation.”
Cross-Country Ski Line-up
During the near freezing/mostly wet snow conditions in Vancouver’s Olympic nordic events, many athletes turned to waxless Zero Skis: nordic ski bases that grip through a technique of vigorous base rubbing until the hairs, which lie in the base material, stand up.
“While approaches vary slightly among brands, zero skis replace grip, or kick wax, with a small section of special base material. To a large extent, the secret of zero skis is using an old technology in a new way,” writes Ian Austen of The New York Times.
“During skiing, the early plastic bases tended to develop small, fuzzy particles of plastic on their surface. When that happened, the skis were, in skiers’ vernacular, hairy, and thus slower when gliding. The problem was solved in the 1980s by mixing graphite into the base plastic.”
Cross-country Skiing Course - Liechtenstein
Reuters reports that the U.S. Nordic skiing market–estimated to be nearly $100 million a year in equipment and resort ticket sales–won’t garner much of a sales bump from U.S. success at the recent Winter Olympics.
“For the first time since 1976, several Americans won medals in Nordic, or cross-country, events at the Olympics. But despite that success, most amateur skiers could not tell the difference between Nordic combined skiing star Johnny Spillane, who won three silver medals in Vancouver, and Mickey Spillane, the detective novelist, said George Hovland, who owns a Nordic center in Duluth, Minn,” reports Ross Kerber.
Snowfall appears to be a key factor influencing the market: “Nordic skiing, especially, struggles to connect Olympic airtime to commerce. It depends on natural snowfall more than skiing and boarding centers that can make their own snow to keep the lifts running all season. Reduced snowfall in many years cut annual cross-country ski sales to about 1.2 million pairs worldwide from 2 million pairs in the 1980s, according to industry data.”
A recent study of heart health in 78 veteran Norwegian cross-country skiers (the Birkebeiner study named after the Birkebeiner ski marathon) has determined that cases of atrial fibrillation–a common form of cardiac arrhythmia (abnormal heart rhythm)–is showing up in athletes at earlier ages.
What’s interesting is that the common risk factors often associated with poor heart health–high blood pressure, heart disease, and excessive drinking–weren’t present with this test group, which is leading some researchers and doctors to the conclusion that excessive exercise may be linked to atrial fibrillation.
“‘We were surprised by the high incidence,’ said Dr. Jostein Grimsmo of The Feiring Heart Clinic in Norway, who led the research. ‘We knew that some cross-country skiers had developed atrial fibrillation, but we didn’t know how many,’” reports Frederik Joelving of Reuters.
“The link between endurance training and atrial fibrillation is still murky. Doctors have long known that intense, prolonged exercise causes the heart to grow, eject more blood and beat slower during rest — a phenomenon aptly called athlete’s heart.”
Robel Teklemariam, a cross-country skier from Ethiopia, has qualified for the Vancouver Olympics. This will be his second trip, having finished 84th out of 100 skiers four years ago in Turin.
Training in Africa requires roller skis and charging it on suburban streets six days a week:
“Robel puts back on his sunglasses and, using his ski poles, pushes off and glides down the sun-drenched hill again, dodging three cars on his way down,” reports Barry Malone of The Washington Post.
“The 35-year-old moved back to Ethiopia four years ago and, although he works as a ski instructor around the world, he knew he had to find a place to train at home.”
