When it comes to sports, it’s customary to talk a lot about training plans, training camp locations, climate, track conditions and much more. All this is certainly important, but I want to touch on another subject.
During the five years of my more or less professional career, I have understood one important thing: there are factors that are not directly related to training and competition, but they determine success. Or a failure, as it turns out. You can approach the competition in perfect shape, but it’s disgusting to race if you haven’t slept well, eaten the wrong food, or received a load of negative emotions from the severity of everyday life.
Let’s try to describe what the ideal life of an athlete is. In my understanding, of course, I’m curious which of my colleagues will agree.
During the next long flight, I realized how much time I had spent in 2022 in training camps and competitions. It turned out less than 300 days. That means my real home is a hotel. Anyone who thinks that between us we discuss the ski slopes or the nuances of the training plans will be disappointed. Between us, we discuss hotels and canteens.
So my ideal hotel, requirements in descending order of importance.
24 hour silence. We have a strange schedule for a normal person: we sleep during the day, we go to bed at 10 p.m. Normal people come to hotels to have fun. And for some reason, slamming doors and discussing the day as loudly as possible in the hallway. Tourists also like to relax mentally. We, in turn, have our own habits that irritate tourists and business travellers.
Every World Cup skier knows the dramatic story of two hard-hitting tourists (a married couple, by the way!) who saw ski boots standing in the hallway, after which something went wrong in their head. Yes, skiers tend to dry their running shoes in hotel hallways. Not the most aesthetic theme, but absolutely international. So, for some reason, the tipsy Norwegian couple was so outraged that they gathered absolutely all the shoes from one of the floors, loaded them into the elevator and took them to the street. The hotel staff noticed it, tried to stop the process of destroying our shoes, a wild noise happened. The best skiers in the world have woken up to find they have nothing to race tomorrow. The dismantling of the boots lasted until two or three o’clock in the morning.
By a happy coincidence, I was on another floor and didn’t find out until the next morning. Find extremely sleepy and extremely angry rivals at breakfast. Mainly also Norwegians, by coincidence. Need I say that I ran a bit better that day, let’s say? And commentators and fans then wonder: “What happened to this or that skier? Probably a drop in form or calculation errors in the preparation?!
In general, in my dream hotel there should be absolute silence and only athletes accustomed to the diet.
We go further. Washing machine in the bedroom or at least upstairs. We have a great place to train in our country – almost everything is good there and the food is simply excellent. But for 100 athletes – two washing machines. Even one and a half – the second broke down several times, did not withstand our training plan. In 2023, no one wants to smell sweat – we wash often, and washing machines aren’t so expensive that they shouldn’t be “thicker”.
About food. You can write a separate article, but it is clear that athletes eat a lot and often need simple, high-calorie foods without pickles and smoked meats. But it’s difficult to eat the same thing during the three weeks of training camp. Much worse when you have to wait for one reason or another. Let’s say that “normal people” eat lunch at one or even two, and at 12 after training one is so hungry that the stomach shrinks. We need a buffet with a good selection of hearty but healthy food and a work schedule for us.
Any further. The hotel should be no more than a 15-20 minute drive from the stadium or main training venue, a gym and sauna are highly desirable.
Now the question is who will have the advantage in the race: the skier who lives in a quiet hotel with a good dining room, in a room with a neighbor and five minutes from the slope, or the one who shares a room with two others, in a hotel with noisy tourists and a pizzeria as the only place to eat, and even half an hour in traffic jams?
I’ll be honest: I have much better conditions in the national team in that sense than the girls from the regional teams who run with me. It definitely gives me an advantage. But, on the other hand, it is also an incentive – I also lived “in an apartment” in a room with two other skiers, it seems, quite recently. And she dreamed of joining the national team with its proven logistics. I have to tell you honestly: for me, a good hotel is a bigger motivation than a cash prize.
A few more words. In the past year alone, things have improved for us. Top Teya, Chusovoy, Kirovo-Chepetsk delighted. But again, I’m not blind, I see that in many ways these are privileges for the current leader of the Russian Cup. And I would like all the starters of the “red group” to have good hotels. These are not such “privileges”, we learned in Russia to build excellent hotels – they are simply not suitable for athletes.
Is there a “perfect ski hotel”? The closest to such a definition is a hotel in the Alps, but it is owned and operated by Russians and skiers themselves. Many have learned from the description what exactly it is. Calm, food, all the amenities for sports enthusiasts, even including a gym with our specialized simulators. And five minutes from the ski and roller ski slopes.
It seems to me that in our country there is already a constant demand for good hotels for athletes.
Source : MatchTV
I am Sandra Jackson, a journalist and content creator with extensive experience in the news industry. I have been working in the news media for over five years. During this time, I have worked as an author and editor at various outlets producing high-quality content that attracts readers from different demographics.
