Gällivare – the choice of World Cup stars

Gällivare – the choice of World Cup stars

Lukas Bauer, Alex Harvey, Jessica Diggins – there will be a star-studded line-up on the tracks of the Hellner Stadium when the ski season gets going again at the beginning of November.

Five national teams led by the USA, Canada and the Czech Republic have chosen Gällivare for their fine-tuning ahead of the start of the World Cup season. The teams will spend much of November training on Dundret and will take part in the Gällivare premiere on 21–22 November.

– We are all set up for a really top class premiere competition. At least four World Championship medal winners have already confirmed, and there will be about 40 World Cup competitors on the starting line. This is going to be absolutely fantastic, enthuses Stefan Nieminen, managing director of SportEvent Gällivare Lapland.

The season starts on the first of November for Ski Camp Gällivare, and already by the first week the World Cup teams will be gathering in Gällivare for their training camps. The Czech Republic and Canada are leading the way, repeating their program from last year.

– Our successes at the World Championships in Falun is proof positive that training in Gällivare worked brilliantly, and we are really looking forward to coming back again, says Czech national manager Lukas Sacher.

The USA, following their outstanding haul of medals at the World Championship, will be hard on the heels of the Canadians and are bringing a full team to Gällivare. Poland and Slovakia have also booked their place for a training camp.

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– Gällivare is perfect for our World Cup preparations. Beautifully prepared tracks and widely varying terrain offers us good distance and interval training, says Justin Wadsworth, the Canadian coach.

The Gällivare premiere, which will round off national team training on Dundret, has a set-up similar to the World Cup premiere to be held in Ruka, Finland, during the last weekend in November and is open to both junior and senior competitors.