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Kandersteg now the second year-round center in Switzerland
on 2016-08-15
Two weeks ago, after two years of building progress, the new Nordic Arena in Kandersteg (Switzerland) got opened with an international opening competition. The new national Nordic ski center of Kandersteg (NNSK) including three ski jumps is now the second all-year-long SJ hill center in SUI, besides Einsiedeln. With this opening, the words of Adolf Ogi old-member of the Swiss FC and chairman of the patron committee of NNSK, “new ski jumps are what this country needed" were comfirmed.
The ski jumpers and Nordic combined athletes can now use a normal hill (HS 106), a so-called medium hill (HS 72) and a children’s hill (HS 27) all year long. The completely renovated and new-designed ski jumps still hold the former, typical Swiss, names Lötschberg-, Blümlisalp- and Bire-Schanze. Similar were also the building measures: all ski jumps received a new and improved hill profile, plastic mattings for the summer and new inrun tracks. While the normal hill is now equipped with a snowing system, an elevator can now transport the jumpers to the normal and medium hill.
This new NNSK is now offering the Swiss Nordic athletes completely new opportunities for training. Ski clubs, regional squads, and pool members of Swiss-Ski and national teams can use the ski jumps whenever they want from now on. In addition to that, the protagonists are planning to offer the localities of the NNSK for seminar and education and also sports and cultural events. These are supposed to take place in the new functional building, in which a restaurant, a fitness area, a ski museum, offices, seminar rooms and the VIP lounge are located. As benefits especially for cross-country skiers and Nordic combined athletes, the NNSK got extended by an access to the local cross-country track area and new, competition-appropriate tracks should be added.
In the future, the new center of Kandersteg shall be the place of national and international competitions in ski jumping and Nordic combined. And yesterday’s opening competition was a good essential: besides the Swiss legend Simon Ammann also popular and successful jumpers as Michael Hayboeck and Stefan Kraft and Germany’s team Olympic champion Andreas Wank participated in this competition. Tom Hilde (Norway) was the winner of this competition, after he managed to climb to the top from rank four by jumping hill record of 103 meters. Hayboeck jumped the same distance already in the first round, but had to let Hilde pass him and became second. His countryman Philipp Aschenwald became third, while Kilian Peier jumped on rank four as best Swiss man. A remarkable thing about this opening competition was the participation of Sabrina Windmueller, who jumped regularly in the ranking. The only Swiss ski jumping lady on World Cup level managed to become 20th of 23 jumpers and took a better result than two of her male Swiss colleagues (Tobias Birchler, who made his debut in summer grand-prix lately and Sandro Hauswirth) and the Canadian Nataniel Mah. Five stakeholders carried the costs for this project of about seven million Swiss Francs. The municipality of Kandersteg paid 1.2 million, the canton of Bern paid 1 million, the Swiss ski federation Swiss-Ski 200,000, the Federal Agency for sports 2 million and the biggest piece of costs (2.74 million) were paid by several supporters and “friends of youth sport”, following the administration company ReventS, which is managed by Robert Rathmayr and Ulrich Wehling.
Ski Jumps:
Kandersteg (Nordic Arena)Advertisement:
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