Nordic Series #30: Lillehammer
After a long hiatus my occasional series, a palate-cleanser amid the many stage races and over-the-top projects I do, returns. I have rather neglected the Nordic Series of late, with a number of extended projects with feature-length stage races and also the change of the mapping engine for Cronoescalada rendering China mappable for the first time has meant I’ve spent quite a bit of time on either mapping parts of the world I’ve never had a proper look at (China, Southeast Asia) or perfecting my many unfinished Latin American projects. The problem with looking at such areas is that you can often get lost in the fog of possibilities, trying to show off every possibility at once, which would never be viable in a real life race unless it was to become stale and repetitive with multiple editions. With the Nordic Series, however, the entire modus operandi is seeking various options in the same site, and with the new Nordic season beginning, the sport, its stars and its venues are all at the forefront of my mind once again.
After my self-imposed rule of an Olympic venue with every multiple of ten, created out of sheer coincidence with #10 having been Soldier Hollow and #20 Alpensia. So for #30, we’re going to a place I know well, a place with cycling heritage and the host of the first Winter Olympics I remember with any degree of detail whatsoever, Lillehammer ’94.
The crazy thing about Lillehammer ’94 is that it is the last time an Olympic host’s venues largely stayed on the World Cup circuit for several of its sports. Hafjell has been an occasional World Cup host in Alpine skiing but Kvitfjell, which hosted the speed disciplines, remains a regular; Håkons Hall hosted the 1999 IIHF World Championships in ice hockey and remains in regular use; Vikingskipet in Hamar, the long track speed skating venue, is Norway’s national centre for the sport and has hosted the World Championships on numerous occasions as well as an annual stop on the World Cup, and the ski jumps and cross-country stadia have been on the calendar for all Nordic disciplines annually since the Games (although the Norwegian round of the Biathlon World Cup swiftly returned to Holmenkollen and the range only sees use at the national level). While a couple of venues of subsequent games have remained in use - most notably Salt Lake City’s speed skating arena and Sochi’s ice hockey venue - none have become the institution on the sport’s international calendar that Lillehammer’s by and large have, and chief among those are its Nordic venues, the Lysgårdsbakkene ski jump complex and the Birkebeineren ski stadium. In addition to this, the ski stadium also serves as the finish of the annual traditional ski marathon known as the
Birkebeinerrennet, a 54km classic-style race taken on by both pros and amateurs, which necessitates the carrying of a small, weighted rucksack.
Lillehammer is one of the small handful of venues on the tour that host all of the Nordic disciplines as one large, combined event, alongside the season opener at Ruka, the Holmenkollen Ski Festival and the Lahti Ski Games. As a result it is an excellent event for the audience, with events taking place across both stadia in all three major disciplines across both genders (at least now, with women’s NoCo being a relatively recent development). I have fond memories of it, travelling to the events in December 2014, jumping on early morning shuttle buses with a hopeful greeting of “hoppbakken?” to ask the driver if they were headed to the ski jump, of seeking out affordable (this is Norway, after all) places to buy dinner and bumping into Justyna Kowalczyk casually walking her dog down the high street, of seeing Devon Kershaw, Alex Harvey and their colleagues in the Canadian team also scouring the restaurant options in the town, and of hurriedly traipsing along the trails of the biathlon stadium to get from the XC venue back to the jump in time for competition after staking out spots in the hills for the pursuit in the stadium. And especially of the final day after the World Cup apparatus was gone, of travelling up to Nordseter to use the ski trails, of going off in the Løype through an empty frozen landscape of snow-covered forests and vast frozen lakes, untouched, pristine and silent, the network of trails seemingly cut for us alone… well, us and Team LeasePlan Go, the professional ski marathon outfit who we bumped into on our way back into the centre…
The twisty road up the hill from the ski jump to the cross-country stadium was one of the places where the idea of the Nordic Series became a thing; my biathlon/XC-based Giro del Trentino was done all the way back in 2013, but that was a one-off at the time. But venues out of the way of traditional bike races gave me the idea of this occasional series, and Lillehammer was one of the places that convinced me that there was mileage in the concept.
Looking down on Lysgårdsbakkene Ski Jumping Arena from above. Note the large parking area and the snaking uphill road to, and past, it
Birkebeineren Skistadion in summer
Of course, the city is not a stranger to hosting bike racing, even given that the Tour of Norway is one of the worst offenders in the “least representative use of terrain” category of race design. This was a notable issue during the days when it was a veritable Tour of the Oslofjord, but since the merger with the Tour of the Fjords to make calendar room for the joke that is Hammer Stavanger, this has been worsened, leaving us fewer race days
and less spectacle in those days provided. The Lillehammer stages actually took place during the best period for the race, although with the likes of Kristoff and Boasson Hagen aging and Norway’s best riders going forward being the likes of Tobias Foss and Odd Christian Eiking, hopefully we can get some more varied and representative routes that take the best of what Norway can offer.
However, until such date as the race takes up that opportunity, the Lillehammer stages from the first half of the 2010s will remain our best example of what the race has to offer. From 2012 to 2014 inclusive, almost identical 195km stages from Brumunddal, on the outskirts of Hamar, to Lillehammer took place as the most hilly and most decisive stages of the Tour of Norway. This headed up the valley past the finishing town, up and around Gausdal before returning to the larger and more famous Gudbrandsdal and two laps of a 35km circuit including the pretty solid cat.2 sized Kinnshaugen climb, before a slightly uphill finish into the town centre, not enough to make this a puncheur’s finish but enough to make it not a pure sprint, but with this being the most decisive stage it didn’t end up a sprint for the most part anyway; in 2012, local duo Edvald Boasson Hagen and Lars Petter Nordhaug, riding for Sky, did a number on Simon Clarke enabling EBH to outsprint the latter and they took a few seconds on a chasing group, with the main bunch around 90 seconds down. A year later, Sérgio Paulinho proved a more difficult adversary to shake, so EBH had to go it alone without the benefit of a teammate, coming in solo just ahead of the Portuguese with Bauke Mollema leading a group of 12 in around 30 seconds back, but by 2014 the climb was becoming more familiar, teams were planning around it and, with this stage having underpinned Boasson Hagen’s two GC triumphs prior to this, they were keen to stay in the driving seat. This resulted in a much tighter affair, and also a crash in the sprint of the small group; Bauke Mollema took the win, Jesper Hansen got 2nd with Rubén Fernández and Odd Christian Eiking getting the same time awarded but finishing a little way down in the group that was credited with a 6” time loss, including eventual GC winner Maciej Paterski.
The 2012-14 Lillehammer stage design
Boasson Hagen would be back with a vengeance however, to take the national champion’s jersey on a Lillehammer circuit in 2015, when the decisive stage of the race moved to a different cross-country skiing town further south (Geilo). On that occasion EBH outsprinted Odd Christian Eiking and Vegard Stake Længen to the triumph. In 2017, the Tour of Norway returned to Lillehammer, however, with a new design which featured a shorter circuit and a climb which, while shorter, was both steeper and able to be brought closer to the finish. And went up past the ski jump to what’s known in that edition of the race as “VIP-Veien”, which is a high point around the back of the ski jump in-run that is just a little higher than the direct road to Birkebeineren ski stadium taken by the shuttle buses. The official stats for this are 3,2km at 8% according to the Tour of Norway.
2017 option
Again it was about small gaps, Pieter Weening (at this point in his career exiled to the second tier with Roomport) taking 2 seconds ahead of Sander Armee and four from Simon Gerrans before a group at 7”, while eventual victor Edvald Boasson Hagen (of course) finished in a further group at +16”. The final Tour of Norway stage in Lillehammer, in 2018, was a tougher set up for the same finish, however due to moving what they were classifying in the final climb, it was beefed up to a much more puncheur-favouring 2,5km at 9,3% - and was given a more general name for the hill rather than the name for the road, so appears on that year’s profile as ‘Kanthaugen’. Alexander Kamp outsprinted Eduard Prades, though holding 2nd enabled Prades to gain enough to take the GC, with the duo taking the race out of the hands of then leader… you guessed it, Edvald Boasson Hagen… on the final day.
Lillehammer stopped hosting the Tour of Norway at this point, but it has since instigated a one-day race of its own, at the 1.2 level. Unfortunately no ski jump climb in this one, however - the first two editions were short (sub-140km)
circuit races including the Maihaugen climb which is around 2km at just under 5%, not really sufficient to force action but enough to offer it. Kamp also won the inaugural edition the same year as his Tour of Norway win in the city, escaping solo from the group of 10 he had been in to take the win by a few seconds, while another Dane, Niklas Larsen, won a sprint of a 15 man group in 2019. The last two editions, during the pandemic, have also been short, but more resemble something from the Spanish amateur calendar than anything else - a one-day mountaintop finish of a race, with a genuine cat.1 finale here at Hafjelltoppen - 10km+ at 7% is a real challenge, and
there are other climbs on the menu too that make this resemble the old Subida al Naranco or Subida a Gorla races. As such, obviously competitiveness and the difficult finale means that time gaps have gone through the roof. Andreas Leknessund won the 2020 edition, contested entirely among Norwegians save for one anomalous, Norway-based Dane, while this year saw Idar Andersen, a 22-year-old grimpeur espoir, climb to glory by a couple of seconds, sprinting away from a select group at the end, finishing just ahead of Gianni Marchand and the two Swedish Erikssons, Lukas and Jacob.
Proposal #1: Vinstra - Lillehammer, 197km
This is easily the most straightforward of the proposals, requires absolutely no optimism, road works or convincing race organisers or Adam Hansen to race, because it consists solely of taking what the Tour of Norway has done with its previous stages into Lillehammer, and combining them to create a single, beefed up medium mountain stage that features a punchy finish to encourage time gaps (this has traditionally been the queen stage of the race when the race has come to Lillehammer) while also ascending both of the climbs used by the real life race as part of one extended circuit.
The first part of the stage is simply a flat run-in from the north in the Gudbrandsdal, to enable me to reference one of Norway’s most divisive exports, the unusual caramelised cheese that is
brunost. I have fond memories of fresh waffles with brunost after returning to the service centre after skiing, but it’s definitely an acquired taste and something of a Norwegian shibboleth; the other reason to pick Vinstra is that despite being a very small municipality - population only just exceeding 2500 - it is a more than viable host from a touristic point of view, as this was the hometown of the model for the character of Peer Gynt, the hero of Henrik Ibsen’s dramatic poem which draws from Norwegian folkloric tales and has become arguably the most enduring piece of Norwegian literature (though a case could be made for
A Doll’s House, and some may even argue that
Hunger by Knut Hamsun deserves a mention, however the author’s late-life controversial politics (he voiced sympathies for the Nazis) have meant his hitherto large footprint in the national literature has been significantly reduced by the difficulty of separating the art from the artist given this fact); as a result the small town is the centre of the annual Peer Gynt Festival, and a mountain road - not all paved, sadly, so not used here - runs from Vinstra to Lillehammer over Gålå, the farming community which hosts the festival’s…er… festivities - and also cross country skiing in winter - and is known as the
Peer Gynt Vegen, or Peer Gynt Way.
This run-in could be from either direction, as it simply follows the valley and the important part of the stage is the 43km circuit which is undertaken three times and takes in the two climbs which have been at the centre of the real race’s stages in Lillehammer.Climbfinder has a profile for Kinnhaugen, under the road name of
Saksumdalsvegen, and reports it as being 6km at 7,8%. That’s pretty reasonable all told, a good cat.2, and is crested three times, topping out for the final time around 25km from the finish. The other climb on the circuit, Kanthaugen, is around 5km at 6,8%, but with a section that, as per the Tour of Norway’s visits here, amounts to 2,5km at 9,3%.
The first two times, we go over the summit here, but the final time, we reduce it down to a cat.3 because we only climb as far as the car park at the base of the ski jump’s outrun. This reduces the climb to 2,9km at 6,9%, but where the final kilometre averages 10,9%. Having walked up this road a couple of times it doesn’t feel as steep as when I’ve climbed up similarly steep roads in other environs, but that’s more to do with the open landscape, as the twistier section further up gives you a bit more visual point of reference for how high you’ve got above the land below. You can see a bit more from
this video of downhill skateboard competition descending from Birkebeineren to Lillehammer via this route - the finish is at the car park passed at 2:52. This is one which is more than achievable within the current parameters of the Tour of Norway - just adding a serious puncheur finish to open up some bigger time gaps than the usual Lillehammer stages had.
Proposal #2: Gjøvik - Lillehammer, 164km
Only a slight innovation here, as we follow a similar pattern to proposal #1, approaching from a flat lake/river/fjordside run, in this instance from Gjøvik on the western shores of Norway’s largest lake, Mjøsa. While I picked Vinstra as a stage start for the purposes of culture, Gjøvik is here because we’re talking the Nordic Series, so it’s worth noting for being the hometown of two major Norwegian Nordic sports stars. The first is 31-year-old cross-country star
Ingvild Flugstad Østberg, a major contributor to Norway’s brutal dominance of the sport in the 2010s, starting out as a sprinter and gradually converting into more of an all-rounder (plus in doing so usurping Heidi Weng as the distance backup du jour especially once Marit Bjørgen started to reduce her calendar; after Therese Johaug, it would frequently be a case of Østberg and Weng skiing everybody else away from the podium, at which point Ingvild would invariably use her sprint prowess to defeat Weng. She has two gold medals from the Olympics, both in team events, one in the relay, and one in the Team Sprint, and a sprint silver from Sochi, as well as a Team Sprint gold at Falun 2015, and five medals - three silver and two bronze - from the Seefeld 2019 Nordic Worlds. In the 2018-19 season she won the World Cup overall, thanks largely to Johaug skipping the Tour de Ski, and Østberg winning four stages en route to the Tour victory. Counting stages, she has 17 individual and 9 team victories at the World Cup, however the pressure to convert her from a sprinter to a pure distance athlete has had consequences, and she was forced to sit out over a year’s competition due to eating disorder problems, from which she has only recently returned.
The second Gjøvik native to have a connection to the Nordic venues around here is the ski jumping trailblazer
Maren Lundby. Lundby made her World Cup debut at the age of just 14 and is an Olympic champion, winning the women’s Normal Hill in the Pyeongchang Games and also at the Seefeld Nordic World Championships in 2019. She was a major advocate for the introduction of Large Hill competitions for women, and put her money where her mouth was by becoming the inaugural World Champion on the large hill in Oberstdorf 2021. She is a three-time World Cup overall winner, in 2018, 2019 and 2020, and has twice won Norway’s attempt at replicating the tour feel of the Four Hills Tournament, the cringe-inducingly-named Raw Air, twice back to back too. So, what was the logical next step? Well… about that…
Yes… she made a foul-mouthed pop record and video where she, playing herself, goes into a murderous rampage. She then appeared on
Skal vi dansen?, Norway’s version of Dancing With The Stars, and got an injury which caused her to miss the entire 2021-22 season including the Olympics, and cause a minor controversy in Norway with various sports stars opining on the wisdom of her choices.
Anyway!!!
Essentially the important part of this stage is in the middle - this is an innovation over the Lillehammer stages that actually took place in the early 2010s which is very plausible given the format of the stage is not dissimilar to those which actually happened, but adds some extra terrain to add a bit of novelty and also some new climbing. Its only drawback from a logistical point of view is that up on the plateau inland from Myøsa there are not many settlements large enough to realistically host a sprint or similar, so there is a large part of the middle of this stage going through very sparsely populated terrain. Great for TV cameras in terms of showing off scenery, but not so great for showing off the support for the race. The key innovation is the introduction of the Heimtjørnet climb, because after climbing Kinnhaugen the first time, instead of taking the traditional triangular circuit back to Vingnes we continue on inland to the northwest, towards the Gausa river which we reach at Forset. Instead of crossing the river, however, we turn left and wind our way up a climb which I am informed is a popular training climb for Edvald Boasson Hagen, who lived for most of his career in this area. This is somewhat larger than Kinnhaugen - Climbbybike has it at 10km and 6,3%, although my profile seems to suggest it is a bit shorter and more significant in terms of average gradient - more like 9km at 7,2%. It is sometimes called Mount Værskei, the name of the cafe at its summit, and it also hosts a rollerski race. It looks pretty cool too.
This is admittedly 80+ kilometres from the line so unlikely to impact the stage in a meaningful manner but it does mean more severe and significant climbing in the legs when we come to the more familiar climbs later on. The finale is very much the same as proposal #1, with Kinnhaugen at 25km from the finish and then the uphill finish into the ski jump finish.
Stage 3: Dombås - Lillehammer, 207km
The third proposal is still a sort of hilly/sort of intermediate stage of the kind that the Tour of Norway tends to like for its decisive stages, although this one is longer than the previous proposals and comes from further afield to travel down the Gudbrandsdal, this time from another ski town, the town of Dombås where the road from Oslo forks into two important trade routes, one to Åndalsnes and the other to Trondheim. It also serves as a junction for Norwegian rail across these routes and formerly also as a telegraph junction. This made it strategically significant during World War II and it was the site of a battle in the Norwegian campaign where the German paratroopers were forced to surrender after attempting to parachute in and sever the transport connections and communication lines, but faulty reconnaissance meaning they arrived at the same time as a Norwegian infantry regiment was bivouacking in the small town en route to the north.
But this is the Nordic Series, so you probably know why I picked on Dombås: there is a biathlon stadium above the town, and its most famous alumni are the sitcom siblings,
Lars and Tora Berger. Both great stars in their own right, they were also remarkably unlike one another for siblings in the same profession; Lars was one of the most elegant skiers ever to strap them on in skate while his sister was known for an energetic, wasteful thrashing style (although her last lap huntress abilities were pretty second to none, at least until Laura Dahlmeier came along and aped that race breakdown but with somewhat more eye-pleasing ski technique). Tora was known for her killer instincts and fearsome abilities in a high pressure shoot, frequently hitting all 5 standing targets in the blink of an eye when it truly mattered; her brother was renowned as one of the most inconsistent, and at times downright in
competent, shooters on the circuit, with a career standing hit rate of 62%. However, both were also great champions. Tora hit her stride late in her career, having her best success in her late 20s and especially early 30s, becoming an Olympic gold medallist in the Individual in Vancouver and then getting a medal of each colour in Sochi, but also winning everything there was to win in the 2012-13 season, dominating all of the crystal globe battles and taking four gold and two silver medals home from the World Championships, to add to four more gold over 2011 and 2012’s championships, and a fearsome collection of silvers and bronzes picked up from 2006 to 2010. On the face of it Lars is less successful, but at the same time he’s also relatively unusual in being a huge success as a cross-country skier as well as a biathlete, in fact having more gold in pure skiing than in biathlon; he won four silver medals in the World Championships and one gold as a biathlete (his most successful years being 2004 and 2009), but he has three gold medals as a cross-country skier - two on the skate legs of the 4x10km relay, and one when he individually won the 15km Individual skate at Sapporo in 2007, taking advantage of an early start number obtained because, as a transplant from biathlon, his World Cup rank was comparatively low. He also moonlit in the Norwegian cross-country relay at the 2010 Olympic Games, which earned him a silver medal.
This one is an easier stage by and large than the first two, with a flat first half as we take on far more of a point-to-point than the previous stages which did some sizeable loops around Lillehammer. This also sees us include the first
cardinal sin of the exercise, in that we have a climb up to a… whisper it…
Alpine skiing venue, in Kvitfjell.
Kvitfjell was one of two venues hosting the Alpine skiing at the 1994 Winter Olympics, along with Hafjell, and it remains on the calendar to this day, largely hosting speed disciplines and largely confined to the men’s events, as the men’s and women’s calendars for Alpine have more independent events than most of the other FIS sports. The road climb to it is on the west bank of the Gudbrandsdalslågen river and is around 4,5km at 8%. The descent takes us into Fåvang and then we have a stretch which is the same as proposal #1, until a deviation into Gausdal over another cat.2 climb, around 6,5km at 5,5%. This takes us to Follebu, from whence we follow the route of old Tour of Norway stages around Lillehammer to return to the city, but where they would either head to the west again to tackle Kinnhaugen, or go through the city to the climb to Birkebeineren over Lysgårdsbakken, this time I’m breaking from that move for a slightly different plan.
We
will climb to Birkebeineren ski stadium, but not via the ski jump this time. Instead we will take the main road out of Lillehammer onto the higher plateau, towards the long distance XC trails at Nordseter. The overall climb to Nordseter is a continuous but variable - often just false flat - 15km climb at 4,3%
according to Climbbybike, however to incorporate it would require an extremely long loop around Nordseter that also takes in the Sjusjøen ski facilities which I may look at at a later date, so instead we hang a right after the first set of climbing out of Lillehammer, and go directly to the ski stadium. This amounts to 5km at 6,2%, finishing 35km from home, and the right hand turn at the top of the climb out of the fjord means not only do we cross our finishing line at the ski stadium at the summit, but we shorten the plateau racing significantly, taking a loop around the outside of the scenic
Nord Mesna lake and also this track on the plateau is rolling, including an uncategorised ascent after Mesnali to the summit of Fåberg, another climb out of Lillehammer to the southeast which we will be descending on this occasion. The overall stats are 8km at 4,4%, but it gets tougher as you go along, the final 5km of descending average 6% so it’s similar in characteristics to the Nordseter ascent, just we’re climbing rather than descending this time.
This enables us to take a final intermediate sprint at Maihaugen, one of the distinctive features of Lillehammer, before we take the harder side of the climb to Birkebeineren ski stadium - only because we haven’t come direct from the water’s edge, we skip some of the false flat, making this ascent to the summit only 3,2km, which average 8% as with the Tour of Norway’s visit here in 2017. This also enables us to have a kind of two-stepped finale, with the summit of this climb coming with 2,5km remaining, then we cross across VIP-Veien, and arrive back on the road past the ski stadium that we took earlier, to join the final 1100m of that climb at about 6% or so, a bit like climbing the different sides of Arrate, or an easier version of the Chieti finale from Tirreno-Adriatico a few years ago. The
2010 stage in particular was my primary inspiration for this finish as these climbs in Lillehammer don’t give us the option for anything too similar to the Pietragrossa route with the super steep 11,5% final kilometre. Nevertheless, having the climb peak just 2,5km from the line but with an uphill final kilometre at a not-particularly-threatening-but-still-quite-demonstrably-a-climb gradient will make for an interesting tactical finale of a kind the Tour of Norway has sadly lacked for much of its existence.
Proposal #4: Lillehammer - Lillehammer, 187km
This is where we start to move off the beaten track a bit, with a more straight-up mountain stage which utilises that significant climb from the GP Lillehammer up to the
other Alpine skiing venue from the 1994 Olympics, Hafjell, as its key obstacle and where you would wager the main strategic moves will be made. The summit of this cat.1 ascent is 28km from the finish, but at
11,2km at 7,4% according to Climbfinder it’s a pretty serious one for a race of the level of the Tour of Norway, that’s for sure.
Before we get there, however, there’s a good deal of climbing in and out of the Gudbrandsdal to be done, as this stage proposal is essentially a beefed-up version of the GP Lillehammer, to turn it into a more severe race. You’ll notice that the first climb of the day is also a cat.1 although it looks considerably smaller than Hafjelltoppen; this climb, to Sølvskottberget, climbs up one of the two roads to this summit, Midtbygdsvegen, and descends its counterpart, Nordbygdsvegen. The climb is around 7,5km at 7,5% which is very much in the ‘contentious’ cat.1 status category - puts it along the lines of, say, Collado Elosua or Puerto de Orduña in the Basque country, or the 2009 Tour/2011 Tour de Suisse version of Verbier. However, this is an ‘optional’ climb for this stage design I believe; the last 4km of it - and the first 4km of the descent - are on unsealed roads, which are akin to sterrato in characteristic. It is likely passable but in the event of bad weather or if there are significant sketchy drops (I couldn’t find any but not all of it is available on streetview) then this can be skipped as, being the first climb of the day and with a perfectly reasonable riverside alternative, it wouldn’t be too detrimental to the fundamental characteristics of the stage.
We then have a pair of cat.2 climbs at our northernmost point, one on each side of the fjord. The first is another new climb to us, around 5,5km at 8%, and then after crossing the bridge at Ringebu we have the Kvitfjell climb we used in proposal #3. We then follow the west side of the fjord, whose road is far narrower and more undulating than the main highway on the eastern side of it, before a couple of longer but less steep cat.2 climbs to ease us toward the finish of the stage. We use the same route out of the Gudbrandsdal that we did in proposal #3, but where that descended through Follebu on a direct-ish route back to Lillehammer, here we take a right to leave the Fv255 in Segalstad, cross to the south side of the Gausa river, and then cross it once more to
climb into Follebu rather than descend into it. We then continue to climb onto Holsbakken, up to the high point of the roads towards the summit of Mount Lundevarden, which is called Follebutoppen. The climb to where I’ve placed the GPM is 5km at 6,7%, but it’s followed by some false flat before we descend via a two-stepped drop to the Gudbrandsdal near Lillehammer to head to our final noteworthy climb.
Hafjelltoppen in winter
Usually, the GP Lillehammer finishes here nowadays, but we continue on. The road does. I think the reason for the GP Lillehammer going with the MTF and not returning to Lillehammer is a short unsealed section between the Reinsvatnet lake’s Nevelåsen parking area and the top of the tarmacked climb from Nordseter Fjellpark to the high point of that road. This road is used as part of the ski trail network in winter, I climbed it from Nordseter up to and around Reinsvatnet, but in the summer it’s part of the road network, albeit part of nature areas and bike paths rather than being commonly-used highways, but still usable for car traffic. With the unsealed section being flat, I really don’t see this as being an impediment to use in a regular race, but if real life organisers did they could instead take the tarmacked road from Reinsvatnet to Mellsjøen and then descend via Sjusjøen, but that would make the summit of Hafjelltoppen between 40 and 45km out rather than inside 30km so less likely to see meaningful action.
After descending from Nordseter via the full route, part of which was used as a climb in proposal #3 (so realistically it’s 3km at 6,5% from the summit to the service centre, then some flat, then 8km at 6% down into Lillehammer, I’ve decided that as part of the bid to induce meaningful action on the Hafjelltoppen climb, I won’t descend all the way down to the water’s edge, and will instead hang a left as soon as we arrive in town, so as to cut the uphill finish at the ski jump down to just that final 1km at 10%, making it less likely to be significant on its own and incentivising the earlier moves, but ensuring that the toughest part of that climb can still be used as a finish and generate some time gaps. The alternative option would be to finish at the cross-country stadium like proposal #3, which brings the distance down to 182km and sees us cut the final descent in half, moving the summit of the cat.1 ascent to 23km from home but with the final kilometre ramp being at just 6% instead of a potentially difference-making 10%. Either option works but I suspected that Lillehammer would want to see some racing in their own streets - though as they get the start as well they may be more amenable to the finis descending direct from Nordseter to Birkebeineren, I guess?
Proposal #5: Hamar - Lillehammer, 226km
Our final proposal is a somewhat beefed up one, at over 220km in length, with some serious climbing and some serious ruler challenges en route as well. This follows the route up from Hamar, opposite Gjøvik on the eastern side of the northern protuberance of Mjøsa, which has hosted a number of the stages into Lillehammer in the Tour of Norway. It was formerly a part of Vang, which it has since outgrown and consumed, and is most famous for
Vikingskipet, the speed skating arena which was used for the Lillehammer Olympics and is the home of Norway’s speed skating tradition - the town first held the European Championships in 1894 and the World Championships in 1895, that’s how far back it goes. Figure skating and both short and long-track speed skating took place at Vikingskipet in 1994, but in testing its capacity various events were held between its opening in 1992 and the commencement of the Games. These included the 1993 UCI Track Cycling World Championships, but its greatest contribution to posterity came a month beforehand, when one of cycling’s great underdog stories, and maverick innovators, Graeme Obree, booked the velodrome for an assault on Francesco Moser’s Hour Record. Armed with his outside-the-box thinking on aerodynamic position and a special and unique bicycle he had designed famously including parts from a washing machine, his initial attempt failed, but after a bonkers night without sleep, deliberately waking himself up to loosen his muscles up, the Scot was back the following day where he broke the record. Although it is one of the shortest-lived Hour Records in history, the backstory of both Obree himself, his bicycle, and the pursuit of the record have made this one of the most compelling and legendary such escapades in the history of track cycling. The original “Old Faithful”, as he dubbed his unique creation, is now on display at the National Museum of Scotland.
The route from Hamar to Lillehammer is only around 50km by the most direct route, which is why the real race has then had circuits. We will be circling Lillehammer from all available options (well, not all, but certainly the majority thereof), as well as incorporating a more difficult route from Hamar to Lillehammer by hopping up onto the Kløvstadhøgda mountain which overlooks the Mjøsa lake; the main road on the shores of it is called Turistvegen and we leave it to the tourists, instead taking the partially sterrato climb and plateau which can be seen in the Rally Hedemarken, the traditional final round of the Norwegian rally championships, so you can see the type of road from
the rally footage to see it’s not an unachievable road for cycling.
After this, we take the circuit around Lillehammer from proposal #3, but in the reverse order, so climbing towards Mesnali and Sjusjøen on a climb which starts off at about 7-8% but gradually gets less steep, eventually ending up as more or less a false flat, totalling just under 8km at 4,7%. We then have the downhill false flat as we circumnavigate Nord Mesna, and then saunter down past the cross-country stadium and descend the Nordseter road into Lillehammer. From here we cross the Gudbrandsdal and take on the Kinnhaugen climb before a long rolling stretch through the Gausdal and a cat.3 ascent of the easy side of the Musdalsvegen climb. This then enables us to descend and cross back to Tretten, whence we have a double climb which is where the main challenges of this stage lie - first we climb the other side of the Sølvskottsberget climb we saw in proposal #4 - so once more this is sterrato on both sides. It’s a bit more integral to the stage here than it was in proposal #4 so this one might be a bit more pie-in-the-sky, but this is 7,5km at 7% with the final 4,5km on sterrato, cresting at 66km from home.
After this we descend the side that was climbed in the previous proposal, before climbing up another road up the side of Hafjell. This one leads to Hafjell Bike Park, a network of trails and downhill runs which has become popular with thrillseekers and mountain bikers parallel to the main ski route. Typically it is accessed by gondola lift from the valley floor, but there’s a steeper, nastier road that can be taken by the riders instead. They’re not doing the fun cycling, they’re doing the serious cycling.
The overall statistics of this climb are 9,9km at 7,4%, but this is skewed by a couple of easier kilometresm, one at the start and one at the end. The main body of the climb is 8km @ 8,5%, and it also includes a steepest kilometre
at 11,7%. The summit is 47km from home but it’s a pretty unforgiving platform, in that you get to the bike park and crest the climb, but that does not earn you a rest, instead there’s now a 10km plateau which is gradually uphill, the first 2/3 of which are on sterrato, so this is actually like a slightly beefed up Plateau des Glières. We then head towards Reinsvatnet and turn right to continue past the main body of the Hafjell resort and descend the main climb from the fourth proposal, which is a wider and more sweeping road than the one we’ve climbed.
After the base of the climb there’s just 10km of flat into the city centre for an intermediate sprint, before we head to the circuit from the 2017-8 Tour of Norway routes using Kinnhaugen, the climb past the ski jump and up toward the cross-country stadium, so if the action has been held back from the earlier climbs because the distance from the finish dissuades it, we have a quick loop around the ski stadia in the classic medium mountain style, and including a bit more of a climb up to the finish than in proposal #4, which would have too short a circuit otherwise.
So there you have it - multiple different options within Lillehammer, with both the short ascent to the ski jump and the longer but not especially significant climb to the cross country stadium as options, and some genuine cat.1 climbs on the outskirts of the city. It’s also one of the least fanciful of the design proposals in this series, seeing as the city is a regular host of the existing Tour of Norway, although some of the unpaved roads might be a bit too far for the current cycling norms, at least where they go downhill, and that’s fair enough. Nevertheless, there is plenty that can be done with the city that isn’t being done at present, as well as the not entirely unreasonable stages that take into account what
is being done with the roads around the city in recent years.
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