Ten races and 65,000 registered participants. Joy, tears, sweat and cheers. Vasaloppet's Winter Week is part of a tradition dating back to 1922, now a ski festival that stretches across generations. The winter of 2017 offered fantastic ski tracks, sun, snow and the magical world premiere of Nattvasan. Here is our summary of the ten day skiing festival, told in ten minutes.
Vasaloppet can now present a new course change for Ultravasan 90, Ultravasan 45, Vasastafetten and Vasakvartetten in the Summer Week 2017. "The improved running experience decided this change. This new-old route offers our participants a wonderful running environment," says Anders “Hobbe” Holmberg, Vasaloppet's Arena Manager.
Littering went down with 90 percent in the Vasaloppet Arena during all races of the Winter Week, excluding Vasaloppet. The rule implementing a time penalty against participants who are found to be littering where not allowed during a race will also apply to cyclists and runners in Vasaloppet's Summer Week.
A happy coincidence led to Ultravasan seeing the light of day. Namely the fact that Mora was home to one of the world's foremost sports organizers, Vasaloppet, as well as home to one of the world's foremost ultrarunners, Jonas Buud! He brought experiences from ultrarunning races all over the world and was eager to give other ultrarunners the opportunity to run a race in the classic terrain between Sälen and Mora. "If you can ski and bike between Sälen and Mora, surely you can run it too," enthusiasts said.
The ninth Cykelvasan in history will run on Saturday August 12, 2017 – 94 kilometres from Sälen to Mora. Today the race was fully booked, which means 13,000 registered cyclists. In addition there are now over 3,200 registered for Cykelvasan Öppet Spår which, on Friday August 11, will run for the third time. There the maximum number of participants is 6,000. In other words, registering is still possible.
The fourth Ultravasan 90 has, like in previous years, attracted many from the ultrarunning world elite to run from Sälen to Mora this August. The 2016 men's class top three (see photo above) and the 2016 ladies' class top two will return in Ultravasan 2017. Also spicing up the starting field are a number of other well-known runners, challenging the victors from previous years. Today over 1000 runners are registered for Ultravasan 90 and Ultravasan 45, which run on Saturday, August 19.
When registration opened for Vasaloppet's Winter Week 2018 on Sunday morning at 09:00, over 35,000 people had registered for a Winter Week race after only one hour. Vasaloppet and Nattvasan were fully booked after hardly 5 and 7 minutes respectively. "Registering for a race gives you a clear training goal, which appeals to many," says Eva-Lena Frick, Vasaloppet's CEO.
For the eighth year in a row, over fifty thousand participants managed to complete their Winter Week races. This year 54,483 (counting all the Stafettvasan sections) reached the finish in Mora. 2,156 participant broke off their race and there were a total of 66,582 registered participants.
All registrations to our ski races 2018 will be administrated on a temporary registration page on vasaloppet.se which will be online on Sunday morning March 19.
Vasaloppet 2017, with 15,800 registered skiers, was concluded with a tight and thrilling sprint in the men's class where last year's winner, Norwegian John Kristian Dahl, managed to defend his victory just ahead of fellow countryman Andreas Nygaard. This despite major back problems in the days before the start. Britta Johansson Norgren won a long-awaited victory in the ladies' class after placing second these past three years.
