It’s the second weekend of December soon and now, shortly after the World Cup Opening, the Nordic Combined Continental Cup also gets underway with the by now traditional Opening at Utah Olympic Park and Soldier Hollow.

The unusually warm weather added some drama to this year’s events but the organisers did everything in their power to not have to cancel the events. The cross-country track had to be moved from Soldier Hollow to Gorgoza Sledding Park higher up in the mountains because of the lack of snow. Because the races can only take place outside of the opening hours of the tubing track, the schedule had to be altered and one of the competitions cancelled.

Now, it will be a single ski jump on the 100-meter hill at the Utah Olympic Park, followed by a 10k cross country event at Gorgoza Park, where athletes will ski six laps of 1.7 kilometres up and down the tubing hill - including jumps and high-speed turns, adding a new dimension to the cross-country racing with a record attendance of 12 nations and a field of 55 international athletes in Utah.

U.S Head coach Dave Jarrett: „We are really psyched to be able to pull this event off considering the weather conditions. Kudos to Soldier Hollow for helping find an alternate site as well as the Utah Olympic for getting the hill ready in mid-November and Billy Demong for securing the opportunity at Gorgoza Park.“

So what will the new setup mean for the competitions in the U.S.? COC overall winner 2013/14, Tomaz Druml is on location and will be hunting for points and a chance to qualify for the World Cup team as well as veteran Billy Demong. But the competition, especially from the strong Austrian team will be fierce. Overall runner-up Lukas Greiderer traveled to the U.S. with a Summer Grand Prix podium in his pocket and teammates Marco Pichlmayer, Harald Lemmerer and Alexander Brandner will probably be dangerous as ever in terms of going for the podium. But also Lukas Runggaldier from Italy and US local hero Taylor Fletcher who just returned from the World Cup in Lillehammer are hot favourites for podium places.

„It will be a pretty deep field with plenty of World Cup skiers from most nations competing. It is nice that everyone will get to start the race and have a chance to score points no matter what place they are after jumping. It will be a crazy race on a short loop, but fun for spectators“, Dave Jarrett resumes.

You can find the start list for the first event here.

After the Opening, the Continental Cup will resume with more competition in Klingenthal, Germany, the weekend before Christmas before also going on break over the Christmas and new year’s holidays.