Launched Tour de Barents 2009
The two former cross country Olympic champions, Vegard Ulvang and Mika Myllylä, launched Tour de Barents 2009 in Kirkenes this week. The competition will be held in April next year with five cross country races in three Barents countries.
When the Cross Country World Cup 2008-2009 has finished next year, Vegard Ulvang and his co-workers are planning to invite the world elite to a seven days cross country competition in the Barents Region. This wednesday the two former cross country champions, Vegard Ulvang and Mika Myllylä, presented the plans for the public in the office of the Norwegian Barents Secretariat in the border town Kirkenes. Among the listeners were the Norwegian and Finnish trade Ministers, Dag Terje Andersen and Paavo Väyrynen.
Ulvang told the attendants that the competitions will start in Murmansk on the 4th of April 2009. There will be two competitions in Murmansk, One in the Norwegian town Vadsø, one in the Finnish village Inari, before the final competition in the capitol of Finnish Lapland, Rovaniemi on the 11th of April.
It was The Norwegian Barents Secretariat together with Vegard Ulvang, who came up with the idea to arrange such an event in the Barents Region, inspired of the better known Tour de Ski. Ulvang says that the event will not be a part of the FIS World Cup in 2009, but on longer view there might be a chance that Tour de Barents will be included in World Cup. With chancing climate the places which have secure natural snow conditions are becoming more attractive as World Cup venues. Most of the areas in the Barents Region has such conditions.
