Vasaloppet's Winter Week 2019 in numbers – registration is now open for 2020

Statistics to sum up Vasaloppet’s Winter Week 2019:

– Ten races over ten days attracted 62,360 registered participants (excluding Barnens Vasalopp on skis) from 64 nations. To give an overview of this past decade there were 65,955 registrants in 2018, 66,582 in 2017, 68,024 in 2016, 67,126 in 2015, 67,435 in 2014, 66,212 in 2013, 63,142 in 2012, 59,161 in 2011, 57,560 in 2010 and 48,184 in 2009.

– 55,013 started and 3,135 broke off their race. This means that there were 793 fewer participants than in 2018 but at the same time a lot more people aborted their races in 2019 compared to the previous year, which can be explained by the weather, which was significantly worse than its been for years. 2,158 broke off from Vasaloppet which is 14.6% of the starting participants. That’s the fourth highest in Vasaloppet history. 51,878 reached their finish (including the five Stafettvasan sections), making it the tenth year in a row that over 50,000 participants crossed the finish line.

– Those who finished their races skied a combined 2,908,145 kilometres! That’s equivalent to about 75 laps around the Earth, 536 laps around Sweden’s border or a total of 32,312 Vasaloppet!

– 12,559 finished in Vasaloppet which means there have now been 588,179 Vasaloppet finishes throughout history. On March 1, 2020, 499 years after the first Vasaloppet, we will in all likelihood see the 600,000th participant ski their way up Vasagatan to their Vasaloppet finish.

– About 37 percent of the starting participants in Vasaloppet’s Winter Week were women and 63 percent were men. Vasaloppet had 16 percent women and 84 percent men. The average participant age was 40.4 years.

– 90 percent of participants came from Sweden and 10 percent from the other 64 nations. The record number of participating nations is 69 (2018).

– A total of 8 skiers were punished in Vasaloppet for unauthorized skiing techniques. Ten or so participants were given a 15 minute time penalty due to littering. Vasaloppet can state that there was very little littering in the track in all races. Abundant snowfall in Vasaloppet made it difficult to monitor for littering but a plan is already in place to clean up the track as soon as it’s possible.

– Nine track machines created new tracks during Vasaloppet to improve the track quality in the porous snow that fell during the day.

– 200,000 Vasaloppet buns were baked by Rättviksbagaren in preparation for Vasaloppet’s Winter Week and some of the last buns to be handed out were turned into semlor in the home of a happy Vasaloppet participant some days after the race.

– On average the five-hour Sveriges Television Vasaloppet broadcast on March 3 had 1,850,000 viewers, the highest number since 2014. In total 37.0 percent of the population (3,600,000 viewers) watched at least three minutes of the live broadcast! When the race was summed up in Mora (after the World Championship broadcast from Seefeld) and the recreational athletes came into focus with interviews in Evertsberg, in Oxberg and by the finish – 861,000 viewers on average were still in front of the TV, following the two-hour broadcast.

– Broadcasts on SVT Play with skiing reporter Mattias Svahn had about 182,000 stream starts and the main SVT Play broadcast had 130,000 stream starts.

– Tjejvasan, which was live broadcast from start to finish for the eighth year in a row, was seen by 454,000 people tuning in to some part of the broadcast.

– Vasaloppet’s own streaming service www.vasaloppet.tv with live streams, clips and finishes, had a total of 250,424 viewers during the Winter Week.

– Vasaloppet’s website vasaloppet.se had 4,480,000 page views and 717,000 unique visitors during Vasaloppet’s Winter Week February 22–March 3. The results page results.vasaloppet.se had 11,900,000 page views and 404,000 unique visitors during that same period of time. (Just during the Vasaloppet Sunday vasaloppet.se had 1,861,000 page views and 353,000 unique visitors and the results page had 6,759,000 page views and 223,000 unique visitors.)

– 121,000 results were monitored through the Vasaloppet app.

– Three different nations took home the top three spots in Vasaloppet’s Winter Week. Swedish cross-country star Britta Johansson Norgren won both Tjejvasan and Vasaloppet with compatriot Lina Korsgren coming in second and Czech Katerina Smutná coming third in both races. In the Vasaloppet men’s class Norway scored a triple with Tore Björset Berdal, Stian Hoelgaard and Torleif Syrstad coming first, second and third.

– Britta Johansson Norgren won six of the seven spurt prizes at the official Vasaloppet checkpoints. Katerina Smutná came just ahead of Britta in Smågan. The spurt prize (Hill Prize) is 10,000 SEK in Evertsberg and 5,000 SEK in Smågan, Mångsbodarna, Risberg, Oxberg, Hökberg and Eldris. In the men’s class Olle Jonsson won the first two spurt prizes and the following prizes were won by Johannes Eklöf (Risberg), Stanislav Řezáč (Evertsberg), Andreas Holmberg (Oxberg), Morten Eide Pedersen (Hökberg) and Petter Eliassen (Eldris).

– HRH Prince Carl Philip skied Vasaloppet with a time of 8.46.12 which can be compared to HRH King Carl XVI’s Vasaloppet time of 8.12.41 in 1977. But the family record is still in place from when Prince Carl Philip completed Öppet Spår in 2004 with a time of 6.21.52, comparable to King Carl XVI Gustaf’s personal best result from 1987, 7.09.45.

– Some other high profile participants who crossed the finish line in Vasaloppet’s Winter Week 2019 were former Minister for Culture Alice Bah Kuhnke who completed the race with a time of 12.02.02. Another former minister who completed Vasaloppet was former Minister for Justice Thomas Bodström who finished with a time of 11.23.34.

Adventurer and inspirer Aron Andersson, participating with sit-ski, finished his fifth Vasaloppet with a time of 9.30.44. Celebrity chefs Melker Andersson and Paul Svensson both had impressive times, passing the finish at 8.10.20 and 7.27.09 respectively.

Triple World Championship gold medallist in curling, Peja Lindholm, skied across the finish line with a time of 9.10.12 and hockey coach Mats Lusth completed the race with a time of 10.28.26.

– Fastest 50-year-old (H50) in Vasaloppet 2019 was Per-Olov Svahn, Boxholm, in 96th place with a time of 4.59.13. Fastest lady in D50 was Catharina Ramhult, Ulricehamn, in 48th place with 6.25.23.

– 1,926 men and 118 women got medals in Vasaloppet. Those completing the race in the winning time plus 50 percent receive the medal. The medal time in 2019 was 6.58.53 for men and 7.21.37 for women.

– 23,002 participants have a chance at completing Vasaloppstrippeln 90 this year. That’s how many completed one of the 90-kilometre races Vasaloppet, Öppet Spår Sunday or Öppet Spår Monday. To complete Vasaloppstrippeln 90 they would also have to complete Cykelvasan 90 or Cykelvasan Öppet Spår and finally Ultravasan 90. (Nattvasan is not a Vasaloppstrippeln 90 race.)

– 3,327 participants completed Halvvasan. These participants have a shot at Vasaloppstrippeln 45 if they complete Cykelvasan 45 and Ultravasan 45 this summer.

– About 3,000 functionaries made all this possible – a big thanks to all of them!

– Registration for the 96th Vasaloppet and Vasaloppet’s Winter Week 2020 opened on Sunday, March 17, 2019. Registration for Stafettvasan, Nattvasan and Vasaloppet opened at 09:00 and for Kortvasan, Tjejvasan, Öppet Spår Sunday, Öppet Spår Monday and Halvvasan at 10:00, all at www.vasaloppet.se. (Registration for Blåbärsloppet, Ungdomsvasan and Barnens Vasalopp on skis will open at a later date.)

FACTS/Vasaloppet’s Winter Week 2019
Sponsorship quotas and late registrations can sometimes make the actual number of participants higher than the official maximum number off registrants.

Race                                             registered     started          aborted                      finished

Kortvasan                         6812              5720                  58                       5662

Tjejvasan                           7131              6120                  68                      6052

Ungdomsvasan                547                486                     7                        479

Öppet Spår Sunday      7686               6771                415                       6356

Öppet Spår Monday     4880               4233               146                      4087

Halvvasan                       3989               3419                 92                       3327

Stafettvasan Teams      2364               2025                  17                      2008

Nattvasan 90                  1608               1368                 96                       1272

Nattvasan 45                     654                602                  10                        592

Blåbärsloppet+VIP          976                861                    0                        861

Barnens Vasalopp Skis   591                591                    0                         591

Vasaloppet                     16257            14717               2158                     12559

VWW in total                         53495                46913                    3067                          43846

including the 5 Stafettvasan sections       62951    55013    3135    51878