The 2023/2024 World Cup season has long since started again for the Nordic combined women. For sport.de, the German athletes Jenny Nowak, Maria Gerboth and Cindy Haasch are once again providing insights into their everyday lives in the world of Nordic combined.
Cindy interjects “cold protection cream and grease paste” and she adds expertly: “Everything you put on your face has to be water-free.”
“Why?” Maria asks. “If the skin of the face cracks because of cold and wind and the water goes into the pores and freezes, skin damage remains.”
Maria then begins to lecture about her preferences for protection from the cold: “My favorites are two pairs of gloves and three layers of thermal underwear on the body!”
“Aha,” Jenny now joins in: “So you make the onion!”
“As in a talk show, each of us reveals our theories on the topic of protection against the cold. The reason for the discussion is definitely a current one. At the first women’s Nordic Combined World Cup in Lillehammer, Norway, high subzero temperatures were a constant companion. Competition temperatures between minus 15 and minus 20 degrees can be endured and there you can exchange ideas between colleagues.
In addition to the countermeasures mentioned, the actors also use pre-warming of competition shoes or mental warming in the head. The discussion is also characterized by technical diction, which is revealed by the constant use of the term “wind chill”.
From warm food, hot tea to more intensive warm-up training, there are all kinds of statements in the final round and as full-blooded combiners we agree on the formula that it probably depends on a combination of all the measures mentioned if you don’t get white spots on your face wants, which are an unmistakable sign of frostbite.
We finally agree that from now on we will watch each other’s faces, which results in a lot of laughter.
The Combined Women’s World Cup took place under special conditions and that doesn’t just mean the sub-zero temperatures, but also the formal conditions.
The women’s Nordic combined is under observation: it should become more attractive and spectator-friendly so that the IOC grants approval for the Olympic Games. If this does not happen, the men in the combined team will also have to worry about their Olympic starting place for reasons of equality.
Equality as an argument for excluding someone. So the new World Cup season begins with crude arguments and natural hardships.
In any case, the latter are easier to endure than the senseless experiment of degrading the basics of winter sports, jumping and running, to such an extent that their combination is arbitrarily eliminated from the Olympic competition catalogue. If jumping and running alone are suitable for spectators according to the IOC’s assessment, this should also be the duel from both disciplines.
In any case, we will continue to defend ourselves against cold temperatures and cold officials!
Best regards
Jenny Nowak, Maria Gerboth and Cindy Haasch