Fossavatn Ski Marathon

Fossavatnsgangan in Iceland celebrates its 80th anniversary in style this year. In its first year as a member of the Worldloppet family, all previous registration-records have been smashed. The previous record, set last year, was a total of 325 participants in all distances. This year that number is expected to at least double, and possibly reach 700. “We were optimistic that the Worldloppet membership would increase people‘s interest in our race, but we never expected such enormous growth so soon” said Daniel Jakobsson, the chairman of Fossavatnsgangan and former Olympic skier. “We have around 630 registrations at the moment. Added to that, there is always quite a lot of local people who wait until they see the weather or race day before they register. Given that the forecast is quite favorable, we just might reach 700 participants. Around 400 of them will ski the longest distance, 50 km. “

The program starts already on Wednesday evening with the Fossavatn MasterClass, where Riitta-Lisa Roponen, Anders Södergren, Ilya Chernousov and the brothers Petter and Morten Soleng Skinstad host an open training session for all ages, free of charge. On Thursday the inaugural 25 km Skate-Fossavatn will take place, while Friday is a family day with 5 km and 1 km races. On Saturday, the 50 km, 25 km and 10 km distances will be skied.

According to Daniel Jakobsson, the whole community of Isafjordur is really excited about the event. “We have a lot of volunteer working day and night to prepare everything for the race. We will have skiers from 25 countries visiting us this year and we want them all to feel welcome in our town. And if anyone is worried about lack of snow so late in the season, I just want to assure them that there is no need to despair. We have much more than enough and it is still snowing, so our track team is kept really busy. It actually looks like we will be able to ski until June, at least!”.