Last winter’s Nordic World Ski Championships in Trondheim ended not only in disgrace over cheating by ski jumping officials, but now in economic crisis as well. Organizers of the huge event have stopped paying its bills, until they have “a full overview” of what are expected to be heavy losses.
“This is extremely sad … I apologize in the strongest of terms,” Åge Skinstad, who led the organization Ski-VM Trondheim 2025 AS in charge of the event, told newspaper Adresseavisen on Thursday. It was a national holiday in Norway, and the night before, he and the board leader of Ski-VM, Åsne Havnelid, had sent a shocking letter via email to all of the event’s creditors.
In it, Skinstad and Havnelid, stated that they had issued a halt to all payments to all creditors holding financial claims against Ski-VM. Two months after all the cheering last March stopped, their organization now faces what they expect will be “a considerable deficit” instead of the profit they’d been charged to generate.
Havnelid herself had earlier led the Nordic skiing championships held in Oslo in 2011, which ended with a profit of NOK 68 million. That’s what was expected after this event as well, with profits needed to help finance the national skiing federation Norges Skiforbund and skiing activities for children and youth in Norway. Now they face a heavy, as yet unspecified loss, and possible bankruptcy that can leave creditors holding the bag.
Skinstad, a former top skier himself and sports chief for Norges Skiforbund, is also a well-known skiing commentator in Norway. He was hired in October 2022 to lead the organization behind the World Championships, and had boasted before they began that he and his colleagues had met their goal of selling 220,000 tickets to events that ran from February 26 to March 9. Skinstad had even said they were “incredibly satisfied and relieved” even though some events attracted few spectators. The championships also faced a lack of snow, rainstorms and a lack of the massive coverage usually accorded such events, because of all the international conflicts going on at the same time.
It remains unclear what went wrong with Ski-VM‘s finances. Tove Moe Dyrhaug, president of the national skiing federation, told Adresseavisen that she’d only been updated about profits and “good control” within Ski-VM. “We received this report (of expected losses instead) with great disappointment,” Dyrhaug told Adresseavisen. “This will have serious and long-term consequences, not just economically, but also for our reputation.”
The federation owns 60 percent of Ski-VM i Trondheim, with local skiing organizations in the surrounding area of Sør-Trøndelag owning 30 percent and the city and county of Trondheim owning 10 percent. All are awaiting a more detailed accounting next week.
It’s the latest blow to a major sporting event that was dominated by victorious Norwegian athletes but already tarnished by a ski jumping scandal that has since led to the suspensions of coaches and assistants who had altered jumpsuits to improve the jumpers’ performances. Three jumpers who’d won medals ended up being disqualified and last week, all involved in the jumpsuit alterations have now left the skiing federation. An international investigation into the incident continues.
NewsinEnglish.no/Nina Berglund
