Kids meet their Nordic Combined athletes 2021
“Getting children in motion” is an initiative launched by Patrick Murnig over 12 years ago, which tries to be a cool role model and supporter for children in matters of sport with numerous supported children’s projects and own incentives. Kids meet their Idols “- The cross-country training with the idols of the Nordic combination”, as one of the projects, has been organized as cross-country training afternoons for the XC- skiing kids of Nordic clubs (especially in western Austria) for over 10 years. Active athletes and coaches are a very essential part of this special afternoon every year.
Patrick Murnig and his JumpandReach team have tried, also in this special and challenging year, to set up this very special kind of cross-country training for children between the ages of 8 and 14 with the greatest possible care. This year – in accordance with all currently applicable regulations – (all those involved (including the kids) were tested for Corona in advance, divided into individual training groups of a maximum of 10 children and KEEPING DISTANCE was the order of the day. Therefore, there was nothing in the way for a great training for the almost 50 children with their idols around double world champion Johannes Lamparter. Among other things, the kids were able to compete at the stations “target sprint”, “parcours”, “slalom”, “ascent & descent” and at the station “ski-jumping hill” and get valuable tips and put their skills to the test there.
The 19-year-old double world champion Johannes Lamparter, as well as his combination colleagues Dominik Terzer, Christian Deuschl and Florian Kolb were already part of this cross-country afternoon as kids and are now proud role models and coaches for the youngsters themselves. With Willi Denifl and Christoph “Bieler” there are also two current coaches from the Austrian combined athletes team, who have been active athletes as role models and coaches for the children over and over again.
Patrick Murnig (JumpandReach): “You need to be careful with the virus, and beyond that we should try to take things into our own hands, especially when it comes to the children. AND for this reason, it is important to me that we continue to implement our children’s projects as well as possible, especially now – within the specifications and with the greatest possible care. Already 12 months ago some kids were sad because we had to cancel this little event after 10 years. That’s why it was clear to me that we would do everything possible – within the current requirements – to organize and implement this cross-country training this year, even if it was a lot of effort. But every child, for whom we continue to model the joy of sport, will leave here really motivated and continue to have fun with the exercise and then everything will be fine 😉 This year it is great to see with how much commitment the Kids but also their “coaches” are involved and live this cool and complex sport together. In this sense, a big thank you goes to the athletes who did it great with a lot of humor and casual exercises and so prepared such an unforgettable day to the children. ”
Johannes Lamparter: I was there in 2013 when I was 11 years old. Willi Denifl, Christoph Bieler and Lukas Klapfer were our “role models” and coaches back then. I can still remember it well – I was so proud, it was really cool. When you see with how much joy the kids are there, then it is really great, because you have the feeling that you can set something in motion as a role model. You can feel that here and it feels great. I hope we were able to give the little ones some useful tips, motivate them and get them even more excited about this casual sport.”
