The inaugural SkiTour 2020 kicked off in Östersund today. Here’s what we saw and what we came to think:




Overall felt like an “old school event” in that almost forgotten sense that top skiing is a big deal, not quite yet – but similar to Holmenkollen.
Not so good:
Unless you are a Norwegian, you wouldn’t like the first day’s results. Even if you’re a Norwegian, you should get concerned. It’s not a dominance – it’s an annihilation of competition, particularly brutal towards the host nation that normally does well at least on female side of the team.
Conclusion: cross country skiing barely has that travelling fan culture that ( already twice mentioned here) biathlon has. If any ski calendar event has a chance of developing a proper following – it would be SkiTour. It has all the necessary ingredients