Pyeongchang Course Preparation View # 5 – February 09th
Just happened to be doing a quick grocery walk into town as the Olympic Torch arrived. There are 1,000’s of police and SWAT vehicles. Huge throngs of people waiting at the entrance to the Olympic Stadium for the opening ceremonies. Small, seemingly peaceful, protest groups as well as many South Korean and American Flags being waved on the same pole. The US Vice president and Kim Jong-un’s sister are expected to be in attendance. Helicopters constantly buzzing overhead. Air Force Jets fly over several times per day.
I am happy we have a legitimate excuse not to be there. At 7:30 this evening Lars, Jung Li and I will prepare the courses for the Ladies 2 x 7.5km Skiathlon. Today was “Official Training” so we also had a chance to practice running the straight stadium tracks and the course tracks. Yesterday we skied with the Jury, all of whom but one, I know from either Whistler or the various World Cups in Canada. One Jury member from Finland, Sweden, Russia, Italy and Korea. The Jury always like to through us a few curveballs and one clever one was to have 5 tracks from the end of the start up to the top of the first climb. We can only set 4 tracks at a time with the PB 400 – so it means a second pass which needs to be exactly parallel and exactly 1.20 meters apart from the first pass. Jung Li will do all of the warm up courses, Lars is on Stadium and I will do the course. There is a light dusting of snow in the forecast for tomorrow morning. Hopefully it all works out and looks good on TV!
Yves stoneground and buffed my skate skis today. The bases haven’t looked so good since the day I got them. The certainly felt much faster….on the downhills. On the up hills fast skis don’t seem to help. Both the red and blue courses are 3.75 km long and they each have 150 meters of Total Climb. The 5km course at Nakkertok has the same amount of climb but over 5 kilometers. It is very tough skiing, steep grinding up hills and very fast downhills with sweeping turns. The extent of our almost daily skis are a lap of each course plus the warm up course. We ventured over to the biathlon courses a few days ago and they are even more aggressive.
Good news, we got access to the Athletes food tent at the venue and the choice is much more to our liking. So we have lunch there and only have Rice, Kimchi and random surprises for dinner.
Photos;
1/Torch arriving this afternoon in Pyeongchang
2/ Vegard Ulvang (Norwegian Skiing Legend), Phillippe (our go to man) and Lars
3/ Len Valjas, myself and Jesse Cockney – Excited to be here and happy they can get pizza in the Athletes village
4/ Yves doing my skis – Gilles; Note the ventilation system. When they turn the fan on there is so much negative pressure you can hardly open the door. And then you lose all the heat in the room.
For event schedules and Olympic news check out: https://www.pyeongchang2018.com/en/index.
Cheers Dirk Van Wijk
