Norwegians on the land, Austrians in the air

FIS Nordic World Ski Championships 2011 in Oslo, Holmenkollen is over. I can return back to reality. It´s time to summarize a bit.


Competitors were great but fans were even better. Now I can just regret that I couldn´t be a part of it. I was wondering how numerous crowd was there on Karl Johans gate during the medal ceremony. Just can´t imagine that. :)))

Fans were everywhere

We have to admit that this was championships of two countries - Norway taking 8 of 12 gold medals in cross-country competitions and Autria taking all 5 gold medals in ski jumping. Not pretty much left for the rest of the world.


My personal TOP3 stars:


1st star - Marit Bjørgen (NOR) - No doubt that she´s the best woman right now, although Therese Johaug crushed the "Norwegian dream or bubble" of 5 golds medals on 30K. She scored 4-1-0 in 5 races.

2nd star - Thomas Morgenstern (AUT) - Just 0.3 point in the individual final on the large hill was the gap to win everything he could - 4 gold medals. Than we could debate whether Morgi was better than Marit. Scoring 3-1-0 in  4 races made him best ski jumper of this winter.

3rd star - Peter Northug (NOR) - Only one from the TOP3 who lost 2 races. (taking "just" silver medals). This fact plus his "idiotic manners on the finish line" made him just 3rd star for me although he is the "media star" number one.

Others stars:
Therese Johaug (NOR) - 2-0-1 - great preformance on woman 30K
Alex Harvey and Devon Kershaw (CAN) - 1-0-0 - totally desired victory for great Canadian men
Andres Kofler (AUT) - 2-1-0 - Austrian ski jumpier no. 2 and new nad old Holmenkollbakken jumping hill record holder - 141m
Gregor Schlierenzauer (AUT) - 3-0-0 - Austrian ski jumper no. 3 right now, took just 3 golds.

Marit Bjørgen and her first gold medal in sprint

What a spectacular view for ski jumpers

Spectacular highlights:

Ski jumping is my "heart stuff". But suprisingly this time Team sprint was the most spectacular event at all.

On the second hand the classy Holmenkollen 50K was the least spectacular event due to mass start. 49km long ski trip + sprint in the end. What´s that about? Mass start should make the race more spectacular. But in this case it was turned into big bore.

It looked like that all the Czech competitors lost their "top form" just before the championships. But we could see that all of them fight hard and don´t give up. Thanks for that.