The winter’s Vasaloppet week begins on Friday; currently, there are 57,000 registered participants. The upcoming week’s weather forecasts speak of plus degrees; here, Vasaloppet’s sports director, Tommy Höglund, talks about the conditions on the course.

February 23 marks the start of this year’s Vasaloppet week. Ten days later, it concludes with the 100th edition of Vasaloppet.

“We have a very positive registration situation. We currently have about 57,000 registered, 5,000 more than we had for last year’s Vasaloppet week. And registrations are still coming in strong. My assessment right now is that we will end up with around 60,000 registered participants,” says Vasaloppet’s sports director, Tommy Höglund, to Langd.se.

Two races are “sold out”; these are Vasaloppet and Sunday’s Öppet Spår, but there are still places available for the other races:

“It’s great to note that we are back to the levels we had before the pandemic. And we’ve had a nice winter in large parts of the country,” says Höglund.

What are the snow conditions like?

“We have plenty of snow. There are no problems at all. Long before Christmas, we laid artificial snow on the stretch from the Zorn Museum to Hökberg. This is a “good base,” but there is so much natural snow on top that the artificial snow isn’t “on top”; it’s natural snow being skied on. As for the parts from Hökberg to Sälen, it’s natural snow, and there won’t be any problem at all.”

The ten-day forecast speaks of plus degrees during the days and around zero at night (until the middle of next week). What does this mean for the tracks? 

“The mild weather makes it harder to keep the tracks when there are no minus degrees at night. But we have the resources to use small grooming machines during the races. As for the “short” races (which start in Oxberg), since there are skiers in all four tracks for a long time, you can’t go in with grooming machines until late,” says Höglund.

Several days feature classic and freestyle. What does this mean for the track preparation? 

“Not much more than that on the days we run “classic only,” we have eight tracks (excluding the start) to Mångsbodarna, six tracks for the stretch Mångsbodarna-Evertsberg, and then four tracks into Mora. When it’s also open for skating, the number of classic tracks is halved, and a freestyle track is prepared on the remaining part of the track,” says Höglund.

SEE THE COMPLETE VASALOPPET PROGRAM HERE