Ready for takeoff: Inside NRK's camera plans for the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships 2025 cross country and ski jumping in Trondheim By Heather McLean Monday, February 24, 2025 - 16:07
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Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) is all set to capture the highs, lows, and flurries of snow from the upcoming International Ski Federation (FIS) Nordic World Ski Championships, which is about to begin in Norway.
From the Gran sen Arena, Trondheim's main venue for all winter sports related to ski jumping, cross country skiing, and Nordic combined, NRK is working as the host production partner for host broadcaster, Infront.
With a packed programme which for the Nordic World Ski Championships is the most comprehensive ever, featuring an additional event for women's Nordic combined and a sprint event for Para Nordic skiing it is all hands on deck at NRK to get the cameras set up and ready.
The cross country sprint is high speed, so you have to cover every inch on that course, and also try to cover it in a way that lets the TV viewers appreciate the speed of it.
With the action set to begin on 26 February, SVG Europe spoke to the directors of the cross country and ski jumping at NRK, yvind Nyborg and Espen Skretteberg, respectively, about their plans for capturing the action.
On cameras for the cross country, Nyborg says: There's always this common ground for cross country skiing. Everything has to be on a certain level to be TV production-ready, with certain cameras [that have to] be there always and then we can add on from that.
The cross country will use four wire cams, three rail cams, one telescopic crane, one snowmobile with a Steadicam on it, and also a normal Steadicam, plus two jib camera cranes and also three drones one racing drone and then two regular drones that are able to fly higher and there will be two days of helicopter coverage.
TV viewers can feel the speed of the cross country thanks to the rail cams which get very close to the athletes
Comments Nyborg on how the cameras are being set up for the cross country sprint course: The courses are very different. The sprint course for the cross country is 1.2 kilometres long, just in the stadium going around a cool course and the spectators in the stands can see almost everything. But this one I have to cover for speed. So I have all my three rail cams in there. I have one big wire cam covering this and also the techno crane is there. It's very quick, a lot of action packed in. If you break a pole, you're done; there's no room for mistakes. It's high speed, so you have to cover every inch on that course, and also try to cover it in a way that lets the TV viewers feel the speed of it. Especially the rail cams, I think because they go so close to the athletes, like half a metre away from them.
And then for the longer courses, I have to plan for some high tech cool things out in the course as well; not everything is inside the stadium. So I spread out my cameras. I have three wire cams outside of the stadium just to cover the more decisive parts of the course where wire cams could cover the action quite well. One wire cam is going parallel to a bridge where they will ski back and forth, and where you get the ski jumping in the background. So for example, in the Nordic combined, that would be a cool thing to see them ski past the ski jump where they competed three hours ago. It's things like that that get you going.
And I always try to find a good stretch for a Steadicam on a snowmobile, so you can follow the action for maybe 700 or 800 metres. I think it's almost like one kilometre here where the skiing will go straight.
Angles and drones
However, Espen Hansen, NRK's technical project manager for the Championships, says the budget has influenced the number and location of cameras for the cross country at this Championship.
He explains the challenge: Maybe the hardest thing every time is the economics that we have to work with. We have a lot fewer cameras in the cross country than they had in Planica. So it's more about getting the cameras placed in the right places. So there's been a lot of planning, when yvind [Nyborg, NRK Sports' director for the cross country] has been with the organisers out in the tracks in Gran sen to find the right camera positions, to get them to cut some trees to get them to open the course, maybe put in an extra turn because that gets better pictures with less cameras, and that sort of thing.
Continues Nyborg: Then I also need to identify the areas where I would like to have some drones. For example, drones are coming up really big in sports now, after a few years when it's been tested it here and there. Usually drones are not a problem because in cross country there's vast spaces outside of the stadium, especially with the forest or fields where you can just fly wherever you want, but for the World Champs, they plan for people to be along the course more or less everywhere. So I have to find those small places where I think I can have a cool drone position, but also have space to fly it because we tend to stick to the rules and not fly over the people, just in case.
Meanwhile, the first-person view (FPV) racing drone will be used to give a close-up view of the cross country athletes, and will also be shared with the ski jumping coverage.
So it's hard to sum it up in a few sentences because I've been thinking about this for two and a half years, Nyborg laughs. Every other month I would come up with something new and try to fix that, like that would be cool, how can we do this? Who's got this kind of tech? .
NRK has a lot of its own equipment which Nyborg and Skretteberg are making full use of. It is supplying two thirds of the OB vans for the host production, and about two t
