Fun times in Scandinavia – Gabriel's Blog

Gabe Gledhill is a former member of the BC Ski Team. He graduated from high school in June 2020, and then, as a dual citizen of Canada and the UK, he accepted an offer to train with the British cross country ski team and compete for Great Britain. The following is an account of his Scandinavian adventures as a member of his new team.

Gabe is also a long time member of the Strathcona Nordic Ski Club, Courtenay, BC.

Evening ski from the apartment in Lillehammer

I would like to start this update with a thank you for all the messages of support! They’ve been great and I thoroughly appreciate all the people that reached out in support of my racing.

The past couple months has been a load of fun. Christmas was spent with a few friendly families in the Lillehammer area (Norway) as other Scottish folk moved upstairs to our apartment. At the beginning of January we completed quite a few test races with a few clubs from Oslo. It was great to compete against some really strong juniors on tough courses over the weekends. After these races were done we chummed up with some of the boys from Oslo and went for a few long skis with them, enjoying the surrounding scenery of Sjusjoen and Nordseter which was amazing at that time of year (probably still is). The only thing about the skiing at the beginning of Janurary was the freezing cold, the lowest I saw on the thermometer was -23C. Our youthful lungs couldn’t take such a beating from the cold and we had to plan around the weather for training. Usually heading outside to ski at the ‘warmest’ part of the day when it would get up to a sweltering -18C. We got used to the cold so after awhile it wasn’t that bad. In mid January we headed to Beitostolen where some friends were renting a cabin and invited us to stay. We went ski touring in Jotunheimen National Park where, after months of not seeing any cliff faces (especially when living in the U.K.) I got a taste of some real mountains for a change. It ended up being nice weather and the snow wasn’t terrible.

Ski touring in Jotunheimen

Lysgardbakken ski jump with snow!

Currently I am writing this while sitting in an apartment we just arrived at, in the city of Jyvaskyla, which is the third largest city in Finland. We have come here for Finnish Junior Nationals after completing some racing in Vuokatti. Proceeding the Covid tests and negative results of these tests. We flew to Vuokatti for World Juniors on February 5th. The journey over was quite nice. Half of our team took the early morning train from Lillehammer to Oslo and then met the Norwegian National Junior Team as we flew from Oslo through Helsinki to Oulu. We arrived with no ski bags and our coach had only his carry on items with him. We weren’t the only ones in this situation as the airport was too small to fit ski bags as well as check in the luggage on the planes arriving. Luckily the Norwegians had driven one of their wax trucks from Norway to support their athletes, and over the past few years Great Britain has gotten support from them as we are a small team and our coach has vast connections. So, we could ski, although on a different pair of skis than our own. For these races, Andrew Young, one of the best British World Cup athletes, had kindly sent us some of his skis to test out. Which, surprise surprise… were crazy fast to ski on. (If anyone is wondering what a wax truck is – it is basically a semi truck that is converted into a wax cabin. It has around seven benches so the techs can wax skis and be in a warm environment. Some of them are pretty fancy.. this one had a TV and a sleeping area).

Huge smile under the mask after receiving negative results!

The ski tunnel in Vuokatti for when its too cold outside.

The atmosphere at the race (FIS World Junior Championships) was like no other. The first few days skiing around and staying in the hotel with all the different teams were pretty cool. The organizers provided everything from transport from the airport to three (all you can eat) buffet meals a day at the hotel. It was pretty relaxing not having to wax skis or cook food. Most teams were in one of the two hotels and some were in chalets. Our breakfast in our hotel had everything from croissants to eggs and a lot more. We had the French, Italians, Polish, Finnish and a few other smaller teams staying at our hotel. Lunch was with every team staff member and athlete at the event, and dinner was a smaller group. First we were with the Romanians but then as teams started to leave we had dinner with the Koreans. It was a great experience with people from around the globe and was great to meet some other cool athletes.

The racing went okay for my first time at this level, as you can’t give an inch if you want to perform at your best. Pretty staggering the margins some people won by - big or small.

My best result was 39th in the 10km skate interval start race. I went through the first time-check in 20th position overall, but clearly started out of my depth and slowly dropped back as the race went on. I was satisfied with how I raced but frustrated with myself for falling in the 30km mass start race while taking a feed at the wrong time, and then miss-counting the 8 laps. I was confused about why everyone in my group started sprinting on the last hill when I thought we had another lap to go..... Live and learn! Got pretty pumped every time I passed the Japanese coaches as they were very encouraging towards the two Japanese athletes that were just ahead of me for most of the race. I am happy to have the opportunity to race at all this year, in such a crazy time.

Our plans for after the World Juniors were changing all the time during the event. When Norway closed its borders to non-citizens till February 28th, we temporarily decided that the best plan of attack was to rent a car and drive to the Swedish Volkswagen Cup in Boden, Sweden.. We were pretty hopeful about it until the Race Director denied our foreign entry (the coronavirus cases in that region are rising). If all goes to plan we will stay here for a couple weeks, race this weekend and then fly to Stockholm for a different Swedish Cup in Falun, Sweden in March.

Sunrise train ride to Oslo