Mo i Rana - five club tracks in the far north

So far north? This week we began laying out the club track approach runs at the currently northernmost construction site in the company’s history. The project is the brand-new jumping center in Mo i Rana (Norway), where five hills will provide a great training opportunity for the youth and junior levels.

Mo i Rana is six hours by car north of Trondheim and thus only a few kilometers south of the Arctic Circle. Until now, there were virtually no training opportunities for the local ski jumping Nachwuchs in the region. If you wanted to train, you had to head to neighboring Sweden. There the training conditions are far from optimal, or you had to commit to the 6-hour drive to Trondheim.

The impetus for building the new jumping center came by chance. In 2019, the jumping facility in the town of Namsos, which lies halfway between Mo i Rana and Trondheim, was modernized. The Mo i Rana authorities heard about it and traveled to the port city to see for themselves. With these impressions, convinced of the quality and the motivation needed, it wasn’t long before Mo i Rana laid the groundwork for a training center. Since we had already delivered convincing results with our club track runs in Namsos, we were also engaged for the project in Mo i Rana.

The new construction was planned for last year, but as with many projects, COVID got in the way. For a year the traffic light in Mo i Rana stayed red, until this summer the green light for construction finally appeared. Five modern hills are being built; the largest with a K-point at 95 meters is even to receive an FIS certificate allowing national and international competitions. Peter Riedel GmbH supplies the run-up track systems and part of the wooden substructure, enabling precise guidance of the tracks.

It feels so good to finally have Norwegian ground under our feet again at home after 473 days. We actually wanted to be here two weeks ago, but the Norwegian government's strict entry regulations threw a wrench into our plans. After the ferry crossing, the Swedish-Norwegian border became a dead end for the time being. A change in entry regulations made our papers and confirmations from our clients, with which we could have entered, effectively worthless. So it was reverse gear, back onto the ship and home to Kiel. Earlier this week it finally worked out, and we were allowed to enter Norway completely officially and legally. After detours to Holmenkollen, Lillehammer, and Trondheim, we arrived in Mo i Rana yesterday. Unbelievable what a cool center is forming here. We thank you for the good collaboration and wish many more jumps on our club track tracks!

A small detail on the side: Mo i Rana is, after Eisenerz in Austria and the Ore Mountains in Germany, the third mining area where ski jumping is practiced and where we have our approach runs represented. It seems Nordic athletes are carved from a special stone :-)

Your Peter Riedel