Peter Riedel distributes early Christmas gifts at Holmenkollen

“Ladies first” was yesterday at the famous Holmenkollen. World Cup jumper Anna Odine Strøm was the first to test the newly laid take-off track from Peter Riedel GmbH during the official hill handover. She and her Norwegian ski jumping colleagues from Oslo SK Kollenhopp started celebrating their first Christmas gift early with their first training on the rebuilt hill.

“I am very happy and excited to have been allowed to jump first. The new take-off track was really good. The first jumper usually does not have the best speed, but the inrun felt really good, and the second jump felt even better. The new track is smoother than the old one, which was much rougher and uneven. The new ice track, however, is definitely better,” explained Anna Odine Strøm. The 19-year-old ski jumper is very satisfied with her current World Cup performance, as she has earned World Cup points in every event so far.

Halvor Egner Granerud was just as satisfied, as after his fifth place at the World Cup ski jumping in Engelberg last weekend, he not only looked forward to a successful Olympic qualification but also some quiet Christmas holidays at home in Oslo with his family.

“The new approach run works very well. We just had a great training session, and it felt really good. In the past, we had ice tracks that were hollowed out. Now we have a solid approach run with plastic on the sides and an ice layer in the track. I think the biggest difference is that now we have the same conditions every year. There won’t be as many variables, and should spring come during RAW AIR with the sun shining directly on the slope, we will still have ice in the approach run. That’s really important and will surely be great,” describes Halvor Egner Granerud of his experiences with the new approach run.

Whether he will actually be allowed to pack his suitcase for the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Games will become clear for the current sixth-best Norwegian in the World Cup overall during the Four Hills Tournament in the coming weeks.

Already on Saturday morning, Peter Riedel and his team had begun the final preparations so that the jumpers would find perfect conditions at the official hill handover. The reconstruction itself proceeded without problems. “We had to work with a really large crane here at Holmenkollen for the first time, whose reach could lift our modules and the entire material over the built-in wind protection. That was a new challenge for us because we had to synchronize all assembly work with the crane logistics,” explains managing director Peter Riedel. The winter weather was not a problem. “For installations at this time of year, we always have to account for it. Here in Oslo we even had a really nice weather window. That meant we were ready four weeks before the contractually agreed date.”

That the hill was only handed over shortly before Christmas was due to the initially missing snow in the inrun and the tight competition schedule of the athletes.