Skiing | Therese Johaug’s record in a fierce uphill race can last for a very long time – now it was missed by a minute

In skiing official records are not quoted, as in athletics and swimming, because the tracks and time slots change from one competition to another.

However, there is one competition related to skiing, where you get pretty close to a valid result comparison. It’s the Lysebotn Opp uphill race at Norway’s popular roller skiing week at Blinkfestivalen.

In the Lysebotn uphill competition, freestyle skiing is done on roller skis on a 7.5 kilometer route with a height difference of 640 meters. The average steepness of the climb is about 8.5 percent.

After last season’s Olympic victories, he retired from Norway Therese Johaug took the women’s course record years ago and improved it several times.

Current the record is 30:45, and it was created a year ago on the way to the first Olympic victories of his career. There were three of them in the Beijing Games, i.e. from every normal distance.

This year, Johaug was no longer defending his victory at Lysebotn, and the competition was not at the level of previous years anyway. This time there were not, for example, the best women from Sweden or Finland.

The victory was taken by the 22-year-old from the USA Sophia Laukli, who showed his abilities as a climber last winter in the final climb of the Tour de Ski after being the fifth fastest on the final day, just Krista Pärmäkoski above.

France came second at Lysebotn Delphine Claudel, who also has sea-rites from the final climb of the Tour. Last winter he was the third fastest.

However, the times of the top two fell short of Johaug’s record. Laukli’s winning time was 35.16, and Claudel lost by 13 seconds.

The difference of four and a half minutes in a good half hour performance is huge. Johaug’s route record can be predicted to have a long life.

Men’s the top of the competition was formed by two well-known oxygen absorption monsters, the Norwegians Simen Hegstad Krüger and Hans Christer Holund. Krüger’s winning time was 28:55.

The Olympic Committee’s new top sports director Matti Heikkinen won the Lysebotni race in 2015 and 2016. In 2015, Heikkinen set a course record of 27:52. Holund took the record in 2017 with a time of 27:37.