Rokas Zaveckas and Laura Pamerneckytė at the opening ceremonies of Innsbruck 2012
Kalnų Ereliai veteran and member of the Lithuanian National Ski Team Laura Pamerneckytė of Vilnius is in Austria this week for the 1st Winter Youth Olympic Games. The 16-year-old is one of just six athletes on the Lithuanian team (two alpine skiers, two cross-country skiers, and two biathletes). In Innsbruck, she will compete in the Slalom and Giant Slalom competitions. On the eve of her first race, she took a few minutes to catch up with kalnuereliai.com and provide some insight into her experiences at the YOG.
In Ignalina, Lithuanian Independence Day, Vasario 16-ają, is celebrated with a festival of winter sport called Sportas Visiems at the Lithuanian Winter Sports Center. I went for the alpine ski races, but there was also cross-country skiing, ski orienteering, biathlon, target shooting, ice skating, and a very impressive winter triathlon which consists of cross-country skiing, running and mountain biking through the ice and snow.
I was eating lunch a few weeks ago with a couple of British ex-pat friends who were recounting the events of a recent business trip back to London. They spoke of traffic jams and commutes, the astonishing price of a simple cup of bad coffee and the security hassles at Gatwick. They finished by declaring how happy they were to be back “home” in Vilnius where good coffee is cheap, a trip to the airport is never more than a quick in and out, and work is only a ten minute walk from home. The traffic jams are the same though. The work abroad business is booming in Lithuania with hoards of young people—some educated, some not—lined up for the chance to work in London or Dublin. On the other hand, Vilnius has become a haven for British, Danish, Dutch, and French businessmen looking for lucrative emerging markets and cozy lifestyle.
A second whole winter away from Lithuania, but somehow Kalnų Ereliai lives on, if not exactly in practice (most of the kids are now part of the national ski team and train with those coaches), but always in spirit. One of my skiers, Ieva Urbonavičiūtė, again took it upon herself to create the 2011 team video. Enjoy!
In my absence, one of my Kalnų Ereliai skiers took on the very difficult job of sifting through the season’s best photos and videos and putting them together with music to motivate and inspire us through the summer until next season. Here is the fantastic result!
Mt. Ruapehu is famous for its crazy nasty weather and I got a taste of it last Friday. At the base of the ski area, it was raining but at the top of the first lift, it was snowing with visibility limited to about 50m. We’d already missed two days that week due to bad weather, so we had to take what we could get. At least it wasn’t windy.
Despite how ugly it was on Friday, the forecast for the weekend was ‘blue as’… this will make more sense if you watch this video on YouTube… Kiwis seriously talk like that…
If I had written this email this morning, I would have said, “Hello from Sunny New Zealand….” But now it’s in the late afternoon, it’s no longer sunny, the wind they predicted is picking up, the rain is falling horizontal, and my fire is struggling to stay lit.
The school holidays are over, and I had a three day weekend thanks to a closed day last Saturday at Turoa due to limited visibility and wind. I spent much of Sunday chopping kindling and bringing in firewood to dry. Three weeks ago I was the worst fire starter in the world. These days, I’m practically a professional…
A couple dozen cars parked along side the road, a small building housing the generator for the “lift”, police tape marking the “finish”, and through a group of people, I could see the last gates of the course. It was the narrowest slalom hill I’ve ever seen.
