[ad_1]
KOLDING: The crown puts a brake on the European Championship event, but nonsense is still allowed.
Players and referees can stand. The few spectators, the press, volunteers and the secretariat, perhaps 150 in all, have to sit down. Photo: Vidar Ruud
Join the European Championships to see what is really happening below the surface. Much is prohibited and some is law. Like when Nora Mørk takes a Spanish one.
But first in the hall, where before the game there is a message on the speakers: Stay seated when the national anthem arrives.
– You wonder what is the most dangerous. To get up or sing, says Norwegian press director Halvor Lea.
Like the players, the coaches and everyone around the team, he has a new everyday life in this championship.
Everything needs to be sanitized between matches. Photo: Vidar Ruud / NTB
Lea, who works at Olympiatoppen, jokes with the coach of the national team, Thorir Hergeirsson, who has had another digital meeting with the press.
– What you need now is not a media consultant, but an engineer.
Both Hergeirsson and the players have become used to managing technical teams. Before, they had to deal with people.
When the players after the game arrive in what is called the mixed zone, where press people often line up to crouch, now there are only PCs and cameras lined up. Questions are asked from where journalists are sitting in the hallway or from home. The same thing happens when there are team meetings with coaches and a couple of athletes the day before the game.
Also, a journalist may want to be called by one player, perhaps two, later.
also read
Kathinka dreams of playing for Norway. I had no idea that performance anxiety can be so paralyzing.
In group to and from the bus. And always with a mask. Photo: Vidar Ruud
Hotel in the moor
The handball girls live in isolation on the 19th. If they reach the final, it will be 29 days this way.
It seems that the hotel where the players live is deserted, and in many ways it is correct. But it is located next to a motorway with a business park a little out of the way, six kilometers from the city center of Kolding.
This is where players stay all the time, except when training or playing a game.
Veronica Kristiansen says they have to wear plastic gloves when they have to stock up on food.
– In addition, we have a partition for other equipment. And we have our own apartment, he explains.
Life still seems to be what this gang is used to, a rhythm of meetings, food, rest, training and massages. Or medical treatment.
For the technical team, it is always too late due to the work of analysis and tactics. Well past midnight, perhaps for both one and two, it is not uncommon.
It’s not exactly the navel of the world. This is the hotel where Norway has its own flat. Photo: Vidar Ruud
Get airy moments
In all other championships, players tend to enjoy a little visit to a café. Now it is not working. They cannot be outside the so-called bubble.
This means that there is little fresh air to take in.
– That’s why we took the bus to the bus, says Nora Mørk.
One hour of aeration is all the equipment has received.
– It was then that they took us a bit by bus, so that we could go for a walk alone in a group. It was a good rest, Løke thinks.
He adds that everyone should go in a group to and from the bus.
– It is not allowed to go alone, says the strings player.
But they allow themselves a bit of nonsense. Like when Nora Mørk pretended to be injured and was limping on crutches with Norwegian doctor Nils Leraand at her side. An assistant tried to hide what happened.
When NTB photographer Vidar Ruud took the photos, spokeswoman Lea was shocked.
– He wasn’t sure what we should use it for and wrote: This is fake newssays Ruud.
But the photographer, who was the only one there, laughed at the whole incident. He is experienced in this game and immediately realized that this could not be true.
– I know the doctor is a scam, says Ruud.
In the last championship of his career for the photographer, he did not limp.
– The fact that players do something like that just shows how safe they are, he says.
Nonsense. Nora Mørk arrives limping on crutches with a serious doctor Nils Lera and at his side. And an assistant who was going to cover up the incident. But the photographer was not fooled. Photo: Vidar Ruud
also read
Gro Hammerseng-Edin abruptly left as a TV 2 sportscaster. Now she explains why.
Ready for a new career
Croatia, the opponent, is waiting in the hall tonight. When the players arrive, there are barricades everywhere. After each game there is a lot written. Not least where players and coaches from other nations have sat on the team leader’s bench. ‘
And at least one thing is for sure. The cozy moment at the end of the day is alive.
Because it is still true that everyone in the company has gifts for the Christmas calendar. They maintain that tradition.
Without a doubt, handball is in the country of covid Photo: Vidar Ruud
Keep calm
In recent days, the media has almost been urged to stay away, if not necessary. The situation of the crown in the country has intensified.
Meanwhile, journalists and photographers have conducted crown tests every five days, players every three.
Journalists have to sit in their seats all the time. There is no press center and food must be consumed “over the counter”. Nozzles are mandatory.
There are many cardboard figures in the stands. Photo: Vidar Ruud / NTB
The closest the media gets to the players is a press conference, with a good distance between the chairs and not least the podium.
National team coaches Thorir Hergeirsson and two selected players arrive there after the game. So, in principle, journalists around the world can ask questions through a screen. Most of the time, it is the Nordic media, not to mention the Norwegian ones, that are interested.
The restrictions have led to the fact that initially there were only ten Norwegian journalists in Denmark. Little by little, more people have traveled home to avoid being quarantined for Christmas and New Years.
Players have to do it.
