Spectating the Tour de Ski: Oberhof

After competing in Schalke, I traveled to Oberhof, Germany, site of our next World Cup biathlon races and also a stop on the cross country Tour de Ski circuit. I arrived in town on December 30th, about an hour before the Tour de Ski classic pursuit race was scheduled to start. Perfect! I put on some warm clothes and joined the stream of people walking up to the stadium. Every now and then it is a lot of fun to be a spectator.

I saw one American flag in the entire stadium.

I was curious who owned it, so I introduced myself and made friends with Meiko, Antje and Johanna, a German family. Meiko spent a few years living and ski racing in Salt Lake and they are big fans of the US Ski Team.

Kikkan ready to start

Holly and Liz started near each other and stayed together the entire race- awesome teamwork!

Jessie across the finish

We watched the men’s race from the famous Bergsteig climb.

The lack of snow made it very difficult to see over the sponsor banners, so we had so build ourselves a rock platform to watch from while little Johanna got to watch ski boots fly by at eye level.

Norwegian fans living it up at the top of the Bergsteig

Noah

Andy

Kris

Hanging out with Holly and Liz for a few moments post race. They had a long night of recovering, packing and driving ahead of them to get to the next Tour stop. What a rare treat to watch and cheer for the XC team! Our paths almost never cross during the winter race season.