Freeway - Cross Country Skiing

Cross Country Skiing

Skiing is a healthy sport and the best about it is that you can choose where you want to ski, with who and you can also do it for how long you want to. But one thing that is very important is snow, because no snow means no skiing.

Skiing has existed in Scandinavia for hundreds of years. It’s a popular winter sport, which tempt both persons who does physical exercise and elite. In Sweden today we have 1858 ski clubs with many members in each. In the Olympic Games and the World Champion Ship nations like Norway, Finland, Germany, Russia, Italy and Sweden are the leaders. Of course there are many other too, but it’s hard to produce good skiers if snow not is available and if your country don’t have economic resources.

Skiing in Sweden

In the north of Sweden we usually have snow from the beginning of December until the end of April. That means a long winter season with a lot of skiing. But skiing is a tough sport and if you want to become a professional skier it takes many hours of training also in summer time.But skiing is not only an elite sport it’s also a sport that fits regular exercisers, because it’s so lenient to your body. You practically work with your whole body, stomach, arms, legs, back and of course you’ll get a big and healthy heart. In Sweden we have a competition that offers kilometres (90 kilometre) of skiing for the less good and the good ones, it’s called the Vasa Ski Race. We have it in different forms and lengths like "girl vasan", "half vasan" and "short vasan". The traditional Vasa Ski Race is a historic thing. The name and where it takes place come from King Gustav Vasa, which once skied from Sälen to Mora in 1522. The first race was in 1922 and they did it in memory of his journey. But today it’s more like a tradition with almost 16 000 starters from different nations.

The start in the Vasa Ski Race.

The world-famous Per Elofsson

In Sweden we have got many good ski profiles through the years. Today we can be proud of our big star Per Elofsson. He is 25 years old and lives in the north of Sweden. Even though he’s not so old he has won two gold medals in The World Championships, he got two gold medals in The Junior World Championship, and won the World Cup many times and of course he has won the Swedish Championship several times. And as a big talent as he is, he’ll probably keep on picking medals all over the world.

Per Elofsson In Lathi 2001.

Doping- The growing problem

Doping is a big problem that is growing and getting more usual. Both the Olympics 2002 in Salt Lake City and the championships 2001 in Lathi were shaken by doping scandals the ski world will never forget. After talking to a soon examined chemist, I got to know what the home nations Finland’s skiers had been using during The World Championships. It was a forbidden hormone named Erythropoietin (EPO). This hormone rises the increase of red blood cells. In our body we naturally have red blood cells and their biggest mission is to transport oxygen to our muscles. To be able to rise your natural number of red blood cells up to between 5-10 percent is very good for condition sports like skiing where it’s important to transport oxygen to the muscles and transport lactic acid away. That means that using EPO leads to a bigger number of red blood cells, which means that you easier can transport oxygen to your muscles, and you don’t get lactic acid so easy. In Salt Lake City Spain’s big skier Johann Mulegg, and a couple of Russian skiers were captured by using a preparation working almost the same as EPO. They used a newer preparation named "Novel erythropoiesis stimulating factor" (NESP), which gives you a bigger effect, more blood cells on shorter time. They didn’t think it would show on the tests, and weren’t carefully enough.

The future of skiing

Doping is one disturbing moment for the future and increase of skiing, the question is who you dare to trust? It’s no fun to compete if it’s not the same conditions for everybody. And another thing is the change of the climate, it’s getting warmer and warmer in the winters and that means no snow. But doping is still worse, it might scare the parents from letting their children start in a skiing club. And that will definitely lead to no increase at al. I hope and I’m proud to say that I don’t think anyone in the Swedish team uses any forbidden substances or methods to get to the top.

Some children on their first steep into the ski world.

What do you think about skiing and doping?