International Junior Camp 2015

by Zak Ketterson
August 16, 2015

Hello, everyone! My name is Zak Ketterson and I am from Bloomington, Minnesota. I ski for Loppet Nordic Racing under the guidance of my coach, Piotr Bednarski. Over the last two weeks, I trained “across the pond” in Sweden and Norway as a guest at the International Junior Camp held by the Norwegian Ski Federation. This camp was preceded by a week long pre-camp in Torsby, Sweden skiing in the famous Torsby Ski Tunnel. I wanted to share some of my experiences from my travels and provide my take on why Norwegians are so successful and what the United States can do to emulate this success.

From August 1st to August 6th, I found myself in Torsby, Sweden. I was part of a team of four boys and four girls, including Midwest native Alayna Sonnesyn. We stayed in a hotel located just a five minute drive away from the ski tunnel. The hotel had a huge lawn and overlooked a beautiful lake. It even had a robotic lawn mower that worked 24/7. The locals called the mower “Viktor.”

 

The ski tunnel in Torsby is located right next to a 5K rollerski track. Rollerski tracks are everywhere in Scandinavia. They are paths designated for rollerskiers, meaning we did not have to worry about bikers, runners, and cars.

 

Of course, the main attraction in Torsby was the ski tunnel. It is about 1.2 kilometers of snow complete with classic tracks and a biathlon range. The rollerski track had a biathlon range as well. We typically skied in the tunnel in the morning and on the roller ski track in the afternoon. One of the coolest parts of the pre-camp was that the Norwegian national team was skiing in the tunnel every single time we skied there. I got the chance to meet Sprint Globe winner Finn Haagen Krogh, as well as world cup winners Tomas Northug and Eirik Brandsdal. 

The Swedish and Norwegian skiers are super lucky to have the ski tunnel. It is about a two hour drive for most Norwegians to get to the tunnel. They have relatively simple access to snow all summer, whereas more complex measures have to be taken in the United States. The existence of rollerski tracks in Europe is also of huge benefit to foreign skiers. We have a few rollerski tracks, such as at Lake Placid and Soldier Hollow, but nowhere near as many as there are scattered throughout Scandinavia and the rest of western Europe.

After a classic ski in the tunnel on the morning of August 6th, we packed the van and made our way towards Oslo, Norway for the International Junior Camp. It was about a three hour drive before we arrived at the Quality Hotel 33 in Oslo.

When we arrived, we brought our luggage to our rooms and went to the welcome meeting. We were welcomed by Norwegian Junior National Team coach Anders Bystrøm and then each country was introduced to the others. I believe there were 15 countries total, including Norway, Sweden, Finland, and France. One thing that is different in a lot of these countries is the existence of a Junior National Team. These teams could be compared to the D-Team of the U.S. Ski Team, but they have more athletes and train together like a ski club might in the United States.

We stayed and trained in Oslo for three days, doing a healthy mix of skiing, running, and lifting together with all of the athletes. On one session, we did the same uphill running test that Norwegian national team athletes do several times each year. The Americans did extremely well; Alayna Sonnesyn won the girls’ time trial and Katherine Ogden was 4th. I placed 8th in the men’s time trial and Max Donaldson was 10th. This test, much like the uphill running test at R.E.G. camps, is a standard procedure in Norway.

 

After three days in Oslo, we packed all the athletes into three massive buses and drove part way towards our next destination, Sjusjoen in Norway. This was not your average road trip, because half of it was done by bus and the rest of it was done by rollerskiing.

 

When we got there, we settled into cabins located right next to the Sjusjoen rollerski track. We stayed at these cabins for the remainder of the camp (August 15th). The remainder of our skiing workouts were done on the track. It was a super nice track, once again complete with a biathlon range. It was 4K or so of paved trails and it was a ton of fun to ski on. The most memorable workout I did had to be the five hour run through the “myr” (Norwegian for bog). Apparently these kids actually run through the myr a couple times a week all summer long. It is basically a ton of moss and water that varies in depth from ankle to waist. 

When everything was said and done, I ended up training 25 hours at the International Junior camp making it one of my bigger weeks of training this summer. The volume of this camp surprised a lot of the American skiers (not me - thanks, Piotr!) and many of them had never done a week this big. Training volume is definitely one area the Norwegian juniors seem to be outdoing us; they do a lot more hours of training than most U.S. juniors. One of the skiers there, Vebjørn Hegdal, told me he trained 950 hours when he was 16 years old. 950 hours is what you’d expect out of a seasoned veteran, certainly not a first year U18. While conventional knowledge of training says it is a bad idea to train too much too young, Vebjørn’s results speak for themselves.

 

I truly believe that most of the reason Norway is better is because their athletes are “spoon fed” in comparison to our athletes. Winter excellence schools, such as Stratton Mountain School in Vermont, are a lot more common in Norway. Schools such as NTG Geilo and NTG Lillehammer are just two of the many ski schools that Norwegian athletes attend. It is also true that the Norwegian Ski Federation has A LOT more funding than the U.S. Ski Team, which allows them to have such things as a Junior National Team in the first place.

Norway is NOT unbeatable, however. In fact, their athletes are exactly the same as ours when they ski for the first time. The difference is that they train (in general) more hours, more professionally. Combine that with a budget 10x that of the U.S. Ski Team’s and you can see why they are successful. It is no coincidence that the best U.S. athletes are the ones that train more hours, and more professionally. U.S. athletes such as Katherine Ogden, Thomas O’Harra, and Ian Torchia all competed with Norway last year at World Juniors in Kazakhstan. The first of the two aforementioned skiers attend ski excellence schools (Stratton Mountain School and Alaska Pacific University, respectively) and Ian Torchia trains huge hours with the best U23 distance skier in the country. We may have to work a little bit harder than the Norwegians to achieve success, but someday, it will happen.

I want to extend a HUGE thank you to the National Nordic Foundation for making this trip possible with its funding. The NNF is helping a ton to provide funding for junior skiers where the U.S. Ski Team simply cannot. I would also like to thank U.S. Development coach Bryan Fish and SMS-T2 coach Gus Kaeding for leading the trip and offering their endless knowledge. Lastly, I would like to thank all of the athletes for making this trip one of the best experiences of my life.

As an added bonus, here is the collection of videos Hailey Swirbul made summarizing each day at the camp. Enjoy!

Thanks for reading!
Zak Ketterson