wrote:
Anders wrote:
kirjoitti:


I don't remember exactly what happened, but a few years ago there
was an incident where either a Norwegian skier broke a pole, or a
Swedish skier broke a pole and a coach from either Sweden or Norway
was right there and DIDN'T give the skier a new pole. This was all
over the newspapers for a few days with discussions of bad
sportsmanship, etc. It may as a result now be policy of a sort
after all the bad press.

Certainly one of the most famous cases in this corner of the world
would be the Norwegian coach in Lillehammer 1994 who turned his back
on Mika Myllylä (who was at that point well on his way to medalling
in the 10km C race and eventually the pursuit, too) and walked away
holding a good half a dozen reserve poles.It caused a bit of an
uproar in Finland and didnät go down all that well with the home
audience, either, who saw it as an infringement against the
unwritten law, the spirit of the Olympics and the duties of the host
nation.

The explanation given by the coach was that he just couldn't give
away a pole because a Norwegian might have broken a pole right
there, too, and what would the Norwegian people have said if he'd no
longer had a fitting pole...

IMHO the unwritten law has never applied to relays (I'm not sure
about sprints, either) where teams either have had to rely on their
own or to form mutual assistance pacts with other teams. But if I'm
mistaken or things have changed, I'd welcome it.


Anders

Leave it to the Finnish guys to rember the details of that episode!

Somebody like Excel or Swix should do a sponsor deal for neutral pole
service. Kind of like Mavic does with it's yellow motorcycles in the
Tour de Fance.

I believe that all the countries have agreed to assist each other in such
cases.

--
Terje Henriksen
Kirkenes