Skiing ALL Day

Hello Blipfriends!
Dolly here again today!

Today we watched TWO big ski events! Of course this afternoon was the last day of the Nordic World Ski Championships from Lahti, Finland. But there was also another big event this morning from Sweden! We didn't think that we would be able to watch it but Mum found a way to live stream from a Swedish website! So we saw some of it!

This first race was REALLY amazing! It is a long distance 90km race called Vasaloppet. This year was the 93rd year and there were 15,800 registered!! WOW!! The elite skiers finish it within about 4 hours but others may take all day! Registration for this event 'sells out' in about 4 min when it opens months ahead of time and this year 43 countries were represented. We watched about an hour before the first skiers came through the finish line. A Norwegian won the men's and the women's was won by a Swedish woman. You can see the amazing start to this race, with all 15,800 skiers here. (Keep watching if you want the whole race!)

In celebration of the big race from Sweden we had Swedish Kanelbullar (cinnamon rolls) for our 'fika' time! We do watch the skiing on the big screen too, but the iPad is useful when Mum has to go back and forth to the kitchen!

After a short break we started to watch the race from Finland. Today it was the men's 50km freestyle race with 'only' about 60 skiers! It was a very exciting race. Britain's Andrew Musgrave was being talked about a lot and he was expected to do very well. And he did!! He came 4th! Only 1.5 seconds behind the bronze, but he beat the terrific Sundby from Norway and all of the Swedish skiers, so 4th was a huge accomplishment! We heard he is very respected in Norway because it is recognised that it is amazing that he does so well since he is from a country without THAT much snow! We were very excited. Normally we cheer for the Swedish team but TODAY we were behind Musgrave! Well done, Andrew!! The gold went to Alex Harvey from Canada, the silver to Russia's Ustiugov and the bronze to Finland's Heikkinen. A great finishing race to these championships.

You can watch the 50km race here.