Latvian para-athlete Mārtiņš Oliņš, who took part in the mountain skiing camp organized by the International Skiing and Snowboard Federation (FIS) in Austria in December with coach Kristina Cera, is ready to continue improving his skills, Oliņš writes on the social networking website “Facebook”.
In November of this year, Latvia received an invitation from the FIS to participate in a mountain skiing camp for para-athletes and their coach. The camp took place from December 9 to 14 in Kaunerthal, Austria, and the Paralympic medalists also took part in it.
“This was a fantastic opportunity to participate in such a camp and exchange contacts, experience and knowledge about this Paralympic sport,” Olins writes.
Latvian representatives have also identified opportunities to join camps in other countries. “I have to go to the big mountains, accumulate kilometers and, who knows, maybe I will manage to ski in one of the FIS competitions. In the meantime, I will continue to strengthen my skiing skills here in Latvia, joining coach Kristine in the joint training sessions. I would like to share my knowledge with another enthusiast who is ready to practice mountain skiing, because there are opportunities to develop. I will not deny that everything also depends on financial opportunities,” Oliņš writes.
In order to be able to register as a Paralympic athlete in the alpine skiing disciplines, Oliņas first had to pass a medical examination at the Sports Laboratory in Latvia under sports classification doctor Sandra Rozenštokas. Since FIS has taken over winter skiing sports from the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) since last year, the Latvian Ski Federation (LSF) also got involved in the process.
Participation in the camp was fully paid for by FIS, while travel expenses were covered from the budget of the Latvian Paralympic Committee (LPK).
Such a similar camp specifically for coaches was already held in France in April this year, where Cera learned the skills of a parasports coach. Oliņš has been engaged in alpine skiing since March 2019, getting the basics of this form of parasport in the mountains of Norway at the “CampSpinal” camp.
2023-12-25 17:04:26
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