Favourable conditions draw about 1,000 skiers to annual Birkebeiner race
Jacob Wouters was distinct in his leaf-green jacket and black trousers against the iridescent white snow. His aluminum chair gleamed in the sun.
The national anthem was sung. The moose horn sounded. And like an arrow from a bow, Wouters was off Saturday 50 kilometres east of Edmonton in the Canadian Birkebeiner at the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village.
This was Wouters’ third year as a sit-skier in the more than a decade that he’s been participating in the Birkebeiner.
“I lost circulation to the legs … and the result is that I’m a double amputee,” he said as a he took a break before the race. “I’ve always liked skiing.”
Wouters said he has been skiing for decades. He considers himself lucky that he’s not more disabled, although the hardest thing about being a sit skier is going around corners on steep drops at the bottom of hills.
“I’m most scared of crashing and hitting a tree and wrecking equipment,” he said with a laugh. “My body survives it, the equipment … it costs money.”
Wouters was participating in the 31 km race.
The other ski distances were 55 km with a five-kg pack (representing the soldiers who skied an infant Norwegian prince to safety — the story behind the historic origins of the Birkebeiner), a 55-km light (without the pack), and a 13-km route. About 1,000 people participated in the events, not including those in the children’s races.
Temperatures on Saturday hovered around -7 C, with a chilly wind blowing every now and then, although the sun, by noon, was enveloped in white clouds.
“The conditions are probably one of the best we’ve had in the last 20 years,” said Allan Jacobsen, coordinator of the Birkebeiner.
In the 32 years that the event has been held, he said, it’s been cancelled five times for either a lack of snow or being too cold.
While skiing is the main attraction, the Birkebeiner also brought with it glimpses of history.
Verner Steinbru, who calls himself a 1941 model, was dressed in traditional Viking garb — a suede wrap made of hide, a Viking shield make of pinewood, an axe and a metal helmet. “I made my own outfit,” he said. “We want to keep it as authentic as possible.”
He was at the start line, heralding participants.
On the other side, at the Waskahegan staging area near Lake Blackfoot, was the children’s twoand four-km race.
Dressed in a green cape that covered a blue coat and pants, his hair under a cosy Viking helmet with braids, four-year-old Sebastian Suffield joined his six-year-old sister, Zoe, and their grandparents in a 2.5-km race.
Zoe, whose favourite colour is pink, had pink horns from her helmet and was carrying a red-hooded doll on her back, swathed in her green cape.
“The best thing about skiing is going fast,” Zoe said with a smile.