Sval­bard ski­ma­ra­thon in wind and cold

This year’s Sval­bard Ski­ma­ra­thon went off Satur­day mor­ning. Strong wind made the race a chall­enge for the 648 par­ti­ci­pan­ts and even threa­ten­ed to burst the event: the wea­ther ser­vice had issued an ava­lan­che war­ning for the gene­ral area, and Toda­len, the val­ley with the race track, is gene­ral­ly spea­king an area whe­re ava­lan­ches are known to occur.

The Sval­bard ski­ma­ra­thon went on Satur­day in Toda­len under chal­len­ging con­di­ti­ons:
strong wind and -12 degrees cen­ti­gra­de.

Ava­lan­che safe­ty was taken care of by a team of spe­cia­lists who sur­vey­ed the area just befo­re the race by heli­c­op­ter and on the ground, so the race could start with a delay of one hour. The ran­ge of par­ti­ci­pan­ts included pro­fes­sio­nals such as the Nor­we­gi­an Olym­pic cham­pi­on Olaf Tuf­te, ambi­tious ama­teurs and fami­lies with child­ren who could cho­se bet­ween half and full mara­thon.

Full distance Win­ner Pet­ter Sol­eng Skin­stad with a time of 2:19:11, fol­lo­wed by Eivind Vold.

For all of them the race was a signi­fi­cant chall­enge, con­side­ring the arc­tic wea­ther con­di­ti­ons and 400 met­res of alti­tu­de that had to be cover­ed up and down.

At any other mara­thon else­whe­re, this would imme­dia­te­ly have cau­sed a major poli­ce ope­ra­ti­on. In this case, nobo­dy paid any par­ti­cu­lar atten­ti­on 🙂

Some more impres­si­ons from this year’s Sval­bard ski­ma­ra­thon.

Click on thumb­nail to open an enlar­ged ver­si­on of the spe­ci­fic pho­to.

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