Vasaloppet Cares for Citizen Skiers

October 14, 2008

On the Swedish version of Vasaloppet’s website appeared on September 25, 2008, the following article (translation by IAWLS):

"How Citizen Skiers will enjoy even more the Vasaloppet course

After last winter’s Vasalopp the race management received criticism about the too bad track conditions experienced by skiers in the last start-groups. Now Vasaloppet has listened to the points of view and presents the following measures that will be introduced in Vasaloppet 2009.

Width in the first climb

Already in September we started felling trees and preparing the ground in order to widen the track by a few meters and allow more skiers to herringbone up the hill at the road crossing.

Stricter control of interdiction to remove the skis

Now the organizers will really control that nobody removes the skis at the road crossing. Who does so will be disqualified.

Maintaining the tracks along the course

More skidoos and a more intensive repair of deteriorating tracks for citizen skiers during the race. This involves a mental injection for many.

Responsible for line-ups

The Vasaloppet organization establishes a person/job with the sole duty to be responsible for offering to citizen skiers the best possible conditions for performing the race.

Lengthened cut-off  times

Existing conditions will determine the times at which the ropes are put across the tracks at the different stations. Also the closing time in Mora will be extended from 20.00 to 20.30.

Cut-off station at Gopshus

In order to really allow more skiers to test their limits, a new cut-off station will be introduced at Gopshus more than 25 km from the finish.

-In this way we try to meet the wishes of the wide field of participants, says Vasaloppet’s Sport Manager Tommy Höglund"

We applaud these measures. They show that Vasaloppet cares for citizen skiers. In March 2007 we published a pathetic letter from an IAWLS member, Amabile Tatone, expressing the frustration of citizen skiers because of the deterioration of the tracks and the time lost in the bottleneck. A remark: the road crossing referred to in the article is on the bottom of the first climb. Many skiers maybe never realized that there was a road because it is covered by snow in winter.

We regret that the article does not say a word about the bottleneck. The problem is that a mass start in a race with 15000 skiers is the wrong method; it is an antiquated, inhuman and unsportsmanlike system. Felling trees will not solve the problem; it will just extend the crowding further along the track. Since the introduction of chips, the solution is a wave start, or better, the Ideal Start first introduced by Marcialonga. In this system there is essentially a continuous flow of skiers at the start, subdivided in “waves”, each with a prescribed starting time of the flow of skiers. The gate at the exit of the start box records the real start times. There is no battle-field effect, skiers behave calmly. Of course, the elite will have a mass start. Experience has shown that in the Öppet Spår events in which there is a continuous flow of skiers, up to 10000 skiers take the start within 45 minutes and no bottleneck occurs in the first climb. Extrapolating to 15000 skiers it is easy to see that if the Vasaloppet start is extended to 75 minutes, the bottleneck will disappear! This corresponds to the time lost nowadays in the bottleneck, up to 45 minutes for the last group, plus the newly decided extension of the closing time by 30 minutes.

We are sure that Vasaloppet will come up with a good start arrangement and we hope it will happen rather sooner than later. When that happens, Vasaloppet will be transformed from the biggest and most expensive race in the world into a really Great Race!

This page was last revised on January 2, 2009