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Home >> Icicle Village Resort Leavenworth News Room >> Olympian Travels
Travels with the Leavenworth Olympian - "Slush Cup - The Tour Comes Back To Where It All Started, Scandinavia" - Torin Koos Photo Story March 2008
Slush Cup By Torin Koos
The fleet of Rossi race boards. Fourteen pairs, one discipline, one athlete. Oh thank heavens for skiing’s servicemen.
Every year the World Cup comes to Scandinavia. Every year the World Cup stops in Falun, Sweden for the Swedish Ski Games. It’s an amicable relationship. While hockey may have overtaken skiing as Sweden’s national sport, cross-country is its national pastime. The public knows Gunde and Charlotte on a first name basis. Television and print report when Bjorn Lind’s triumphs, on the Fredrickson brother’s travails. Three times Falun played host to the Nordic World Ski Championships; they are a finalist to host the again in 2013.
Central square, Falun. A late medieval Gothic brick style church from the 14th century. The Dalarna region, with Falun as its centerpiece, lost out to Calgary to host the 1988 Winter Olympics. In support of the next Olympic bid, ABBA signed onto the effort, cranking out a hit single. Unfortunately for Sweden this wasn’t enough. Albertville, France won right to host the 1992 Games.
Not from Sweden. Not from Albertville. But hopefully Torino will suffice. Falun wasn’t always the bridesmaid in the world’s eye. Stora Kopparberget calls Falun home. For hundreds of years the copper mine was Sweden’s greatest treasure chest. The legend begins with a mischevious he-goat Kare who broke away during the day to frolick in fields where copper lay. Every night Kare would return, horns and hoofs and skin colored red. One day the farmer’s son followed Kare to his favorite spot, rolling around on reddened earth. The boy soon brought his father there, who in turn cashed in the farm and began sifting through the boggy landscape with pan in hand in search of copper.
What it’s all about back in the Bronze Age. Copper. Lots of it. At its peak the Falun mine churned out 2/3rds of Europe’s copper needs.
In time, mining practices improved. Where Kare’s owner once sifted through the bogs now were now tunnels running underground in search of ore. First the miners used the fire-setting method. At night the miners set fires against the rock, softening it, before extracting it one chisel stroke at a time. After a couple hundred years of fire-setting, miners discovered gun powder. Workers pounded meter-long iron rods into the rock, pulled them out before filling the cavity with the explosive powder.
Descending into the abyss, seventy meters below land. 300 meters still to go. Pretty sure back in the day the electric lights and steps weren’t part of the workday experience though.
Inside the mine narrow, wet tunnels open up into excavated cathedrals of rock and wood support. Interestingly, almost unbelievably really, the wood inside the mine doesn’t rot or hardly age with time. The minerals and dampness keeps the timber alive. Unfortunately for early miners, gunpowder is a low explosive - it produces a gas that generates enough pressure to propel a bullet, but does not blow up the gun’s barrel. Mining is about shattering rock in a controlled manner, then extracting the ore and getting it to a factory for refinement. In 1867 the industrious Swede Alfred Noble came up with a safe, manageable explosive that packed more punch than black powder. He patented it and sold it as Nobel’s Blasting Powder. Today we know this powder as dynamite. Alfred made a few Swedish kroner off his invention. In his will Mr. Nobel left his wealth for a foundation to honor achievement in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and in spreading peace. Maybe you’ve heard of it.
The pump house bell tower behind the brightest bluebird sunny day in Sweden one can hope to find in February.
In the 20th
century hydraulic drills supplanted dynamite at Stora Kopperberget,
which begat open pit extraction. This continued until 1992, or the
year when copper accounted for less than 0.5% of the rock coming out
of Stora Kopparberget. After 1500 years, eighty-kilometers of
underground tunnels and a 100m by 400m open pit, the mine had been
emptied of all its treasures. Today the industrial landscape – the
tunnels, slag piles, refineries and buildings – survive as a Unesco
World Heritage Site. This means the site is “important for the whole
of humanity and are guaranteed protection and care for all time.”
Kikkan Randall rolling the rock. While she might have a pretty mean bowling game, its nothing compared to what she can do on the skis. 5th in the Lahti World Cup? Not bad. Not bad at all.
~Torin
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Torin Koos
is a member of the National A Team for the United States and a World
Cup, World Championship and Olympic competitor. If you are interested in supporting Torrin Koos we will be happy to pass your information along to him. Your partnership will help support the lifestyle needed to keep the dream alive. As an athlete, Torin hopes his Olympic journey inspires the community to participate in the free air lifestyle, the same customers that come to visit the Leavenworth area.
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