December 4, 2008 (Kuusamo, Finland) – The 7th FIS Nordic opening held at the Kuusamo ski resort Ruka (Fin) set a new audience record with 18,000 spectators visiting the ski stadium over the weekend. The revised competition program, true winter weather and the success of the Finnish athletes were given as reasons for the record numbers. On Saturday, a compact program consisting of five World Cup events within six hours was well-liked and created a great atmosphere at the stadium as 9,000 spectators came to cheer for their favourites.

The Opening got off to a rocky start, with the rescheduling of the Ski Jumping team event to Saturday due to heavy winds that surfaced towards the end of the first round on Friday evening. Nordic Combined started off the competitions on Saturday morning with the first test of the new competition format. With the defending World Cup champion Ronny Ackermann (GER) taking the season’s first victory, not much seems to have changed in practice.

In the season’s first Cross-Country sprint competitions Slovenia’s Petra Majdic continued her incredible record in Ruka taking already her third back-to-back win on the challenging sprint course while the Norwegian men swept the podium led by the defending World Cup sprint champion Ola Vigen Hattestad on top.

During Saturday’s Ski Jumping, Simon Ammann of Switzerland edged a strong Austrian trio – Wolfgang Loitzl, Gregor Schlierenzauer and defending World Cup champion Thomas Morgenstern in this order – for victory. In the team competition staged immediately thereafter, the host nation Finland took revenge from the poor showing in the individual event and won ahead of the highly-favored Austrians. The German team surprisingly landed in the third place, ahead of the Russian team.

On Sunday, the first individual start distance race in classical technique saw a Finnish double victory in the ladies with Aino Kaisa Saarinen taking her second World Cup victory ahead of teammate Virpi Kuitunen. In the men’s race, 24-year-old Martin Johnsrud Sundby (Nor) claimed surprise victory in an exciting race, just 3.5 seconds ahead of defending overall World Cup winner, Lukas Bauer (Cze). More Finnish celebration was seen in the second Nordic Combined race as youngsters Anssi Koivuranta and Janne Ryynaenen took a double victory for the hosts. It was Koivuranta’s maiden World Cup victory which was made that much more special as it came in front of his home town audience.

All eight planned events were successfully completed. The positive feedback motivates the organizers to develop the event and atmosphere further, especially after the Nordic Opening has now been confirmed by the FIS Council for further four years up to and including the 2012/2013 season.