After returning from the Biathlon World Cup in Antholz-Anterselva last Spring, we bought tickets to this year’s World Championships, and began a long wait to revisit this lovely area in South Tyrol (Alto Adige) in Northern Italy. This time it was quite different, though: there were far more races and far more fans, but less snow, and coronavirus. Although the first confirmed cases in Northern Italy were reported just a couple of days before we were to leave Italy, there were no cases reported in South Tyrol, only in Lombardia (our return trip took us to Milan). Only after returning home we found out that there were also cases in South Tyrol. Consequently we were quarantined to work from home for two weeks!
Even if it hadn’t been coronavirus, we were quite apprehensive of attending large and dense crowds coming from all over the world, and quite sure that we were going to be sick after the trip. To this date, we have both been healthy and without any symptoms. Knock knock!
This time I tried to concentrate more on the competitions, instead of trying to take perfect pictures of our favorite biathletes. Overall the world championships were not a great success for our Finnish team: the best rankings were 9. in the mixed relay and 11. in women’s relay.
Since most of the races started late in the afternoon, we had a lot of time to go running or hiking in the mornings. This and being at the altitude of 850 meters for two weeks did miracles to our aerobic shape! In addition to these runs and hikes, distance of 46 kilometers altogether, the walks to grocery shopping, to and from the railway station and between the shuttle buses to access the biathlon stadium in Anterselva made up to 60 kilometers in 12 days. Whoa!
Below I post some random photos from our days in Brunico and Anterselva.
Day 1 (Mixed relay): The morning walk took us to the trails on the nearby slopes.
Day 2 (Women’s sprint): This morning we ran on nice rolling country roads past Villa Santa Caterina. The landscape was being powdered with light snow fall.
Day 3 (Men’s sprint): We had another early morning walk to the nearby slopes and visited a small cemetery honoring those who died when South Tyroleans fought for independence in 1809. Later we learned that Napoleon was somehow involved in this war, too.
Day 4 (Women’s and men’s pursuits): Kaisa poster (from last year) was up again, but disappeared after a couple of days.
Day 5 (Day off): There were a couple of hiking trails that started from our doorsteps, and we chose one with the reasonable length (1.5 hours instead of 10 minutes). We got lost early on since we did not realize the trail went through a farm. We had a steep climb in the pine forest before reaching the vantage point at Aufhoferkofel with great views over the Puster Valley (Pustertal-Val Pusteria). From there we continued even higher up, until we reached a sole standing tree in the middle of the pasture. The bench under the tree was perfect for lunch, despite the chilly wind. The whole hike was “only” 7.4 kilometers and it took almost three hours, with total ascent and descent of 562 meters.
Day 6 (Women’s individual): On this sunny and chilly morning we went running on the rolling bicycle path in the fields to the direction of Olang and Anterselva valley.
Day 7 (Men’s individual): This was the only day that actually felt like winter. A sudden nasty snow storm hit us towards the end of the race, and everyone was rushing out of the stadium. Other days so far had been sunny with blue skies or at most partially cloudy.
Day 8 (Single mixed relay): This chilly morning’s run took us five kilometers South-East from Brunico to a small town of St. Lorenzen-San Lorenzo di Sebato. The route mostly followed the river, and was practically flat, but not very scenic, rather boring actually.
Day 9 (Day off): On this second day off from World Championships we traveled to Bozen-Bolzano, the capital of South-Tyrol. We had a 30 minute connection in Fortezza, since we bough a wrong train ticket (one that was not valid in a German train that left earlier). We had no particular plans in Bolzano but to stroll around the town, have a nice lunch, and then visit the South Tyrol Museum of Natural History, and exhibition about the moon excursion.
Day 10 (Women’s and men’s relays): Nothing much to say about this day, other than it was a beautiful sunny winter day. Our women (ranked 17.) came in 11th in the race, whereas our men (ranked 15.) were lapped and came 26th out of 27 nations.
Day 11 (Women’s and men’s mass starts): Nothing to write home about the last day of races either. The only athlete from the Finnish team in the mass starts was Kaisa Mäkäräinen (in the red bib), who came in 14th with 5 penalties.
Day 12 (Time to go home!): Before taking the train to Turin, via Fortezza, Verona and Milan, we went for one final run in Brunico: up to the castle hill. We were a bit worried about the travels, since Austria had closed the border for a few hours the night before, but we were told there was nothing to worry about. And there wasn’t … until we reached Milan. The departure board told us that the train to Turin was 60 minutes late, then 70 minutes, then 120 minutes, and eventually 190 minutes, like all other trains. After an hour there was no indication that our train was going to leave at all. There was no sign that any train was going to go anywhere! At some point, after waiting for 3 hours, we saw a Frecciarossa with a completely new number about to leave to Turin. We consulted the conductor and he waved us in, without even bothering to look at our tickets.
At that point we were too tired to figure how to get to Grenoble from Turin, since we had missed our bus hours ago, so we checked in a hotel and had a nice dinner at Ghiottus Taberna – Cucina Piemontese.
Day 13 (Finally on our way home!): The weather next morning in Piedmont was rather drab. We did not take the earliest bus to Grenoble, but enjoyed the nice hotel breakfast in all tranquility — we were not in hurry anyway, anymore. We had to buy new bus tickets (sunk cost), but hopefully Trenitalia will reimburse some of the train tickets because of the massive delays.
