It is 1,547m up and down on snow, a mountain of pain for others. Although they cover it in more or less three minutes, skiers compare it to an 800m of athletics: maximum speed from the beginning and repeated sprints, until the red zone, on each mound, and at the end, of course. Like a cycling classic in the Ardennes. The ability to recover after each acceleration is the key, what they say about loving lactate, embracing it and feeding on it. The efforts are repeated over and over again. It is the so-called sprint test for teams of two, which means four thousand five hundred in just two hours for each skier. One to qualify and achieve a good position at the start, and three, one every three minutes, to cover the six posts.
It was freezing at night in Val di Fiemme. Snow is no longer the dish of flour of other days. She is hard, reactive, as Jaume Pueyo likes, in a state of grace.
Marc Colell, a debutant aged 20 years and a few months, solidly fulfills his task in qualifying (29th) so that Spain, thanks to its brilliant leader, Pueyo, a 24-year-old veteran who achieves the second best overall time, appears in the final with the fifth best time.
Aspirations skyrocket, ambition. There is talk of a place in the top eight, of winning medals, why not?
Not only the athletes, young people full of future, dream, but also those responsible for the technical team – the head of the fund, Martí Vigo, the coach, Jaime Gil – who launched three years ago a kind of scientific-technical revolution in the way of training, competing, choosing objectives… Spanish cross-country skiing is no longer a shot in the air, unpredictable, spontaneous. “It is an approach to sport with a different approach in terms of the type of training or the intensities,” explains Olmo Hernán, the sports director of the Spanish federation, about a group of very young athletes who are permanently concentrated in the area of Seu d’Urgell and the Catalan Cerdanya, and in the French base in the Pyrenees in Font Romeu. A small colony with a lot of enthusiasm, a miniature compared to the great mass of athletes in countries like Norway, where cross-country skiing is the king of sports, Italy, France, the United States or Sweden. “We are also working a lot on the analysis of trajectories with GPS and what are the moments in which they have to push, drop, what type of technique they have to use, the lines… We work in a more intelligent and data-based way.”
He was also helped by his fleeting time in professional cycling, a sport that launched its own revolution in training, nutrition and technology a decade ago. The future is now, and the French Alps Games, in 2030, are viewed from the bottom with another optimism.
In the final, the body leaves Colell, 20 years old, de la Seu. While the Norwegians and the Americans temporize in the lead, at 3m 14s a year or so per lap, it is not so difficult for the debutant to stay in the group, but in the fourth stage, his second post, Klaebo begins to feel ants in his legs. The monster accelerates on its beloved mounds and Colell says enough. Quickly transition to asymmetrical, survival skiing. The Norwegian drops the time by five seconds, which is lost by the young Catalan, who arrives behind the pack of 14. “Marc is still a very young athlete, it is the first time he has found himself in a situation like this and he is not yet used to these rhythms,” says Hernán. “Above all, it has been difficult for him, as he says, on the longest climb. He has a lot of projection, and he is very explosive. He draws attention for that, but he fades quickly and still doesn’t have the capacity to hold on when there is a very long climb. And he and his coach work to achieve that.”
Pueyo, from Badalona who went to live in La Seu, is so well off that Hernán even states that if Spain had two pueyos could have opted for the podium. “Jaume is extraordinary, in the best moment of his career, at a beastly peak,” Hernán exalts, speaking of the pearl of the Spanish depth, who sprints to the start at the team’s fifth post, his third, to close the gap that Colell had left. He covers it in just 2m 58s, the third fastest time, just behind the fabulous Hedegart and Ogden. Return Spain to the peloton, to hope. But in the final stretch, Colell, with hardly any time to recover, stays again. Spain finishes last.
“Marc will grow little by little, and we have to wait, but, although it is extraordinary to have reached the grand final, I have a slightly disappointed feeling because we all expected that they could have been, not in the top 5, which was almost impossible, but between seven and 12,” analyzes Hernán, always ambitious. “The sensations have been good, but the result can be improved, it is clear.”
They regret the result in France, which had a fabulous couple led by Mathis Desloges, the only one who in previous tests had resisted Klaebo’s whims. They finished 12th perhaps due to a matter of bad luck with the poles, light, very thin, carbon, which they broke on a couple of occasions. The changes of equipment made on the fly by attentive coaches at key moments, the climbs, where in a group of five it is sometimes essential to force the equipment, prevented a serious loss of time, but not of positions.
Far away, immune to the restlessness of his rivals, Klaebo shows off again, for the fifth time in a Games that he dominates at will. He leads Norway to gold, and it is also his fifth gold in five events, the tenth at the age of 29 in his three Olympic participations. All that remains is the big test, the 50 kilometers on Friday, to achieve full success. And few doubt that he will achieve it.
