Vasaloppet 2011

by Thomas Huber, photos by Boris Petroff

April 25, 2011

Again a new edition of the Vasaloppet week with rich experience fort the skiers. The frame was perfect. Enough snow, excellent tracks for all races. Temperatures pleasant, maybe a bit to warm around the midday time with light plus. But always better as deep minus. Altogether nearly 60.000 registrations for all races in that week. And more then 51.000 could finish the races, a new record for Vasaloppet. It’s a big business, many officials, much press and television. Sometimes the single skier felt alone and lost in that circle.

15.100 skier started on Sunday morning for the main Vasaloppet race over 90 km in classic style. Transportation to start with buses took longer then in years before, but after that accumulation problem last year they decided to give the buses own road from Mora to Sälen, 25 km longer but it worked. In Sälen cold in the morning with minus 12 degrees, but after 4km, after the first uphill moderate minus 5 degrees. That’s again the headword : first uphill / bottleneck. Like always, after wave 2 it starts to accumulate, that’s a pity, especially for the slow ones in the last waves. But this is tradition and wanted from the organisers to present spectacular pictures to the television. After that part no more problems with track or food.  2,6 km before the finish, they installed a camera to check if the skiers use right style on that uphill. Some hands of skiers were disqualified here, most popular one was Michael Rösch from German Biathlon national team.
The top of the elite broke early away from the main field. But this year Brink the later winner, was not in that leader group. He neutralize around one minute and got alone later to the leaders. His winning time was 3.51 hours. This was not really interesting for the most participants. They had their own goals, to reach the finish line, to be better then in other years, reach time limit for the medal and so on.
After crossing the finish line, the next marathon started, finding bags after bus ride, stay in the line for shower, fight with cold water in the shower, stand in the line for meal, stand in the line for the diploma and pay for the profile…..  that’s Vasaloppet too.

After a while 99% are happy having done and start thinking to next edition or next races. One day later the registration for 2012 was opened, and after one day there are already over 1200 registrations.
On monday after the race it started to snow and rain, so the weather god was with the skiers in the Vasaloppet week.

Results 90k classic:

This page was last revised on September 22, 2011