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2014 WINTER OLYMPICS

OLYMPICS

Swedish ski wax sparks bitter feud with Norway

A Scandinavian drama is unfolding on the slopes of Sochi, which has seen the Norwegians taking aim at the Swedes over their "superior" skis.

Published: 17 February 2014 11:41 CET
Swedish ski wax sparks bitter feud with Norway
The Swedes jump for joy after winning gold in the Men's Relay 4x10km. Photo: Maja Suslin/TT
While not a threat to international peace — yet — the enmity between Nordic neighbours Sweden and Norway on the supposedly placid cross country skiing tracks can barely be matched for bad blood.
 
After striking three early golds in the cross country events at Sochi 2014, the men's and women's relays were an unmitigated disaster for Norway, coming fourth and fifth in races both won by… Sweden.
   
Norway's fearsome star cross country skier Petter Northug — a bete noire for Swedes who does not mince his words — cut a sad and angry figure as he crossed the line in the men's race.
   
"Ridiculed by the Swedes, again!" lamented the Norwegian daily Verdens Gang after the men's race Sunday.
   
It was the first time the all-conquering Norwegian women's team had even lost a relay race since 2009 while the men were outclassed on every leg by Sweden, Russia and France.
   
The reason for the disaster was less do to with the athletes themselves than the preparation and waxing of skis to deal with the Sochi snow — soft and slushy after hot weather.
 
The world's top cross country ski teams employ a battalion of specialists to prepare athletes' skis for every race, putting the right wax on the base of the ski to ensure the maximum glide on different types of snow.
   
But this time, Norway's usually infallible waxing team appears to have got things wrong. And to the delight of Swedes, badly wrong, while the Swedish skis have moved like lightning.
   
"Zlatan would have won on those (Sweden's) skis," Northug was quoted as saying afterwards, referring to the Swedish football star Zlatan Ibrahimovic whose skiing talents he presumably does not rate too highly.
   
"When the skis are that bad, it's just awful. It's not fun to race when it's like this," fumed Norway relay team member Chris Andre Jespersen.
   
Rubbing salt into the Norwegian wounds, Swedish gold medal winner Daniel Richardsson baited his rivals by suggesting it was their form, rather than their skis, that was to blame.
   
"Those guys I raced with today have the same (skis) as me. Not bad, not worse either. We have good skis in Sweden. I think Norway has as well."
  
Jespersen spat back: "If he'd raced with my skis I don't think he would have done so well."
   
Sweden's cross country skiing coach, Rikard Grip, acknowledged that the team's skis had been "fantastic" and admitted there had been a concerted effort to work out how to beat the Norwegians.
   
Meanwhile Norwegian media pointed out that Norway was still far ahead of Sweden in the overall medals table with five golds at Sochi compared to Sweden's two, both from the relays.
   
"Okay, so we were crushed by the Swedes in the relays, we can't wax skis and there are crises in the Norwegian cross country," said Verdens Gang. "But we are still big brother. At least in the medals table."
 
As in all good Nordic dramas of hatred and passion, a sub plot has also developed in the shape of a feud between Norway and the Russian team.    
 
This has been rumbling all season since Northug — him again — vowed to "destroy" one of Russia's top skiers Maxim Vylegzhanin in Sochi.  
 
The tensions reached a peak last week in the first men's cross country race of the Games when Norway's Martin Johnsrud Sundby took bronze in the skiathlon by a whisker from Vylegzhanin after skiing across his path in the final strides.
   
Russia protested, Sundby was warned but kept his position and medal. But the Russian neither forgave nor forgot and Russia's silver-medal winning relay hero Alexander Legkov said he was glad Norway had come out of the race empty handed.
   
"It's good to know that the French won bronze. I didn't want the Norwegians to win because of what they did to Maxim," he said.
 
"This is revenge – tit for tat."

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SPORT

The French Paralympic star who survived war, grief and mutilation

The Paralympics is full of stories of disabled athletes overcoming the odds to achieve sporting greatness but few bear the trauma of Jean-Baptiste Alaize.

Published: 28 August 2020 10:06 CEST
The French Paralympic star who survived war, grief and mutilation
Jean-Baptiste Alaize training in Antibes. All photos: AFP

The 29-year-old French sprinter and long-jumper, who features in Netflix documentary Rising Phoenix released on Wednesday, was just three years old when he lost his right leg.

Not by accident or illness but by the brutal hack of a machete.

A child caught up in the civil war in Burundi in October 1994, he watched as his mother was beheaded.

“For years, every time I closed my eyes, I had flashes. I saw my mother being executed in front of me,” he tells AFP after a training session in Antibes, running his finger across his throat.

The killers left the Tutsi boy for dead. Alaize carries a large scar on his back but he was also slashed across the neck, right arm and right leg by his Hutu neighbours.

He woke up in hospital several days later, alive but missing the lower part of his right leg which had had to be amputated.

“With my mother, we ran, we ran, but we didn't manage to run far,” he says. “We were executed 40 metres from the house.”

A decade later, after coming to France in 1998 and being adopted by a French family, he joined the athletics club in Drôme.

Fitted with a prosthetic limb, he discovered that running gave him his first night without a nightmare since the attack.

“From my first steps on the track, I had the impression that I had to run as long as possible, so as not to be caught,” says Alaize who now lives in Miami.

“I remember like it was yesterday my first night after this session, it was… wow! I had cleared my mind. I was free.

“My energy, my hatred, were focussed on the track. I understood that sport could be my therapy.”

He tried horseback riding and enjoyed it, reaching level six, out of seven, until he pulled the plug.

“It was my horse that let off steam and not me,” he laughs.

The psychologist did not work out either.

“She made me make circles and squares. After a few sessions I told her that I wanted to change my method.”

However he did click with his school physical education teacher, who directed him to athletics after he had anchored his team to a spectacular “comeback” win in a 4×100 metre relay.

His classmates had no idea he was an amputee. He had hidden it to avoid teasing and more racial abuse.

“I was called 'bamboula', dirty negro, the monkey. It was hard.”

Fortunately, the Alaize family, who adopted him after he had spent five years in a Bujumbura orphanage where his father had abandoned him, gave Jean-Baptiste a base and a home that he had not had for years.

“When I arrived here I didn't know it was possible,” he said.

“I had lost that side, to be loved. I still can't understand how racism can set in, when I see my parents who are white, and I am a black child… they loved me like a child.”

His parents, Robert and Daniele, had already adopted a Hutu child from Rwanda, renamed Julien.

John-Baptist was originally called Mugisha. It means “the lucky child” which is not quite how things worked out. His new family name, though, suits him better. Alaize is a pun in French for 'a l'aise' – at ease.

The French disabled sports federation spotted the prodigy, and he began collecting his first trophies, including four junior world titles at long jump, three of them with world records.

“It was starting to change my life and I was happy to represent France,” he says.

He went to the Paralympic Games in London (2012) and Rio (2016), where he finished fifth in the long jump, just five centimetres short of the bronze medal.

Now armed with his state-of-the-art prosthesis, which he nicknamed Bugatti, he was dreaming of taking a step up at Tokyo 2020 and going home to France with a medal but the postponement of the Games has decimated his sponsorships.

“I'm still looking to compete at Tokyo 2021 or 2022 and Paris 2024,” he says.

“If I don't succeed, I will have to turn the page which would be sad.”

He hopes that Rising Phoenix will raise his profile and maybe attract some sponsors.

The documentary's producer Ian Bonhote is in no doubt that Alaize's star is rising.

“He bursts through the screen. His story will resonate,” he says.

“The nine athletes in our documentary all have different backgrounds, but none survived what Jean-Baptiste suffered. His disability was imposed on him in such a savage and violent way.”

Rising Pheonix is available now to view on Netflix.

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