When Bjørndalen was isolated in China, he ran around in the hotel room.

The biathlon legend has lived in China for five months this year. For more than a month he has been isolated in the room. But there was also training there.

Briefly about the case:

• Ole Einar Bjørndalen got the job as coach of the Chinese national biathlon team in the fall of 2019.
• China will host the Olympics in Beijing in 2022 and aims to draw athletes in a number of disciplines in which they have not previously claimed.
• Bjørndalen brings with him two Norwegians, a Frenchman and his wife Darja Domratsjeva.
• Former cross-country skier Anita Moen is the coach of the Chinese women’s national cross-country ski team.

Extreme. It is an adjective often used in the characteristics of the athlete Ole Einar Bjørndalen. It involved long stays at altitude, inhuman amounts of training, motorhome, whiskey gurgling, and self-imposed loneliness to avoid illness. He is now a trainer for Chinese biathletes. It’s still just as extreme in Inner Mongolia.

In the 2020 pandemic year, he has been in China for five months. First three months alone, then ten days in Europe before taking his wife Darya Domracheva and daughter Xenia (4) with him on another trip. At each entry, he was required 17 days of isolation in a single room. For five and a half weeks he has been in quarantine with a curfew.

– But I have to move, he says, who was in one place about 1000 hours of annual training a year until he turned 40.

But how do you get rid of the desire to exercise locked in a hotel room in China? Yes run. Back and forth. Nine meters is each section.

– I could run 20 kilometers in one day.

That is, a little over a thousand times forward and a little over a thousand times backward on the thirty-foot running track from the hotel room.

Have a hard time

Bjørndalen makes another sacrifice in order to get the job done. Now it’s not about preparing as best you can for your own accomplishments. Now he will bring out the biathletes who can boast of being among the best in the world when China hosts the Olympics at home in less than a year and a half. Then the pandemic becomes a pandemic. The problem is there to be solved.

– I would like to have another year. But everything is possible. We had a 16th place last season. If we get a perfect training period from May 1 next year without interruption, it can be good, he says by phone from the Chinese biathlete base in Yakeshi in Inner Mongolia (the part of Mongolia that is in China).

Now, it’s not just isolating quarantine regulations that is extreme in Bjørndalen’s training task. You have to adapt to a completely different culture both in daily life and in training.

– It was different, but tremendously educational. During the three months that I was alone here in China, I never thought that I had had such a progression in knowledge of Chinese culture. It has been incredibly inspiring. But the hat has boiled a lot in a positive sense. It was a lot of fun. If you press the right buttons, there are unknown resources on this system.

Obey orders

It speaks of obedient practitioners who do what they are told.

– The planned for one day will be implemented. In Europe and Norway, athletes are probably more independent. Chinese practitioners must have good leaders, but then they can do anything, he says.

For the first three months he was alone. The first three months of this summer he was alone in China with the responsibility of 11 practitioners. The coaching team of the committed Chinese biathletes is five people. Among them is his wife, Darya Domracheva, who is a female coach. Six women and five men are willing to exercise and want to improve all the time.

– I probably worked from six in the morning until 11 at night all the time during this period.

Now that the season is approaching, he doesn’t feel so alone. He brings with him Tobias Torgersen, Erik Kulstad and French shooting coach Jean-Pierre Amat and of course his wife Darja Domratsjeva and little Xenia at the age of four. A lot of time is spent learning how everything works.

– It’s a completely different organization than any other I’ve encountered, but when you learn it, there are crazy opportunities.

2000 km by bus

When we spoke to Bjørndalen, he was nearing the end of his training stay at Yakshin. Now he will take his athletes to the heights. Due to travel restrictions and the risk of infection, the Chinese national team was sent by bus the 2,000 kilometers to its next base.

There they will remain under the guidance of an athlete who has more experience with altitude training than most athletes regardless of sport. The big question for athletes today is whether they will make it to Europe and the opening of the World Cup in Finland at the end of November.

– The plan is that we travel on November 16. We hope and pray that everything goes well, he says.

It is not the entrance to Finland that is the biggest problem, but everyone in the team can leave China. Chinese coronary restrictions are much more extensive than in most Western countries.