Nordic skiing: new high-level equipment at the National Nordic Ski Center in Prémanon in the Jura

New equipment was inaugurated on Tuesday at the National Center for Nordic and Medium Mountain Skiing (CNSNMM), based in Prémanon, near Les Rousses in the Jura. They aim to welcome and train our hopes and the current and future stars of Nordic skiing or biathlon. Athletes now have a huge 900 square meter weight room where they can further optimize their preparation with countless state-of-the-art equipment.

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“For us, the comfort that is there is unparalleled”

It is the old gymnasium of the center which has been completely rehabilitated to replace the old adjoining weight room, which was smaller and dated from the 1970s, like many of its tools. From now on, in this brand new “high performance space”, we will now sweat there with even more desire, as Lou Jeanmonnot-Laurent explains. “There are eight locations for squats and weightlifting.” The biathlete from Haut-Doubs, second in the world cup last winternotes the place for many athletes, who each have their own criteria regarding weights, bars, etc. “On the scale of a year, when we do just that, it's gigantic. For us, the comfort that it provides is unparalleled. I know a room of the same type in Oslo but it doesn't There's not the amount of material we have here.”

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“We feel that we are at a high level, that’s clear”

The change is even more significant for Jura resident Sébastien Lacroix, double 2013 team world champion in Nordic combined. “It's true that I hadn't been back for a very long time. This is a real weight room. Before, we used the old machines that existed. So it worked but today we see that there are really a space that is dedicated to that, we feel that we are at a high level, that’s clear.”

Install a doctor, a physiotherapist, an osteopath, a nutritionist

Also conquered, Anaïs Bescond, the former Jura biathlete triple Olympic medalist in 2018. “The good thing is that it has been intelligently developed with tools and machines that we need, with people who know what we are talking about. We have physical trainers that we work with now who say: 'Well, there's a need for that, there's no need for that.' And what's more, here at Prémanon, we're on all fronts, there's not just the weight room to keep us busy.”

“The second phase which is currently being carried out is really the installation of a doctor” explain Nicolas Michaudthe Jura native supervises the performance center at the National Nordic Ski Center. “We must also install offices of physiotherapists, osteopaths and nutritionists, because today for high performance all services are important. We try to develop and be cutting edge in all services. Which makes the medal it's the athlete, he does it with his mental and physical morphological data and the training he does. But in the end, between placing third and sixth in the Olympic Games, it can be tools and places like that. We pay attention to a well-crafted biathlon rifle, a pair of cross-country skis that don't slip. We give importance to everything around the athlete.”

Among the many assets of the National Nordic Ski Center in Prémanon, we can also cite around thirty hypoxic rooms which make it possible to simulate the effects of high altitude on the body in order to make it more resistant to effort. This renovation and investment in this high-performance French Nordic ski area will have cost nearly 1.2 million euros, 80% financed by subsidies from local authorities and the State. As a reminder, the new Nordic Combined World Cup season begins at the end of the month, the weekend of November 29 in Finland.