Two World Cup tournaments are scheduled to be held in Zakopane this season on January 15 and 16 (team and individual competition, respectively). However, it seems that the struggle of the Podhale jumpers could take much longer.
As journalist Filip Czezanowski says, there is a possibility that the World Cup will take place in Zakopane from January 21-23 – that is, in the period when the Sapporo competition was scheduled to take place. Relevant talks between the Polish Ski Federation and the International Ski Federation were about to begin.
Why this sudden change of schedule? The complex pandemic situation in Japan threatens competition in Sapporo – the “Land of the Rising Sun” grappling with another wave of COVID-19 cases.
The situation may soon worsen, because only a few days ago, Japanese media – such as Kyodo News or “The Japan Times” reported the first cases caused by a new type of coronavirus – Omikron.
Tokyo imposes new health restrictions – even without them, competition on the island of Hokkaido would be very noisy, both for organizers and for athletes from other countries. In such circumstances, then, it is clear that the FIS will look for a “Plan B”.
Had it not been for Zakopane, and Rasnov, it turns out, was an ‘alternate host’, we would be dealing with a fantastic World Cup return to Romania about exactly 11 months later. In the 2020/2021 season, two competitions were held in Rasnov from February 19-20, 2021.
The first of them – singles – turned out to be quite successful for Kamil Stoch, who at that time took second place. Only the Japanese Ryoyu Kobayashi was better.
TC / PaCze
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