Irish heart beats strong in Norwegian islander Thomas
But dig a little, and you find his deep Irish roots.
His mum, Celia Maloney, from Dunmore in Galway laughs when reveals that she met her Norwegian husband Ove “on a holiday in the Canaries many moons ago”.
He was a dairy farmer so in 1985 she moved to Leka. They’ve raised their five children on the island which doesn’t really have a town or even a senior school, forcing local kids to take the 18-minute ferry daily to the mainland in their late teens.
But growing up on a farm and on an island had advantages for a 6’3” beanpole who loved cross-country skiing in a country where it is the national sporting religion.
“Where I live is very remote but when there’s not a lot of people you had to be creative and do your own stuff and we did a lot outdoors which builds strength,” explains Westgaard (22) who was called Thomas after his late Irish grandfather.
He gets his endurance genes from his own father who, for years, raced ‘ultra’ marathons on skis, including one famous 78km race in Italy and another annual 45km trek from Norway to Sweden.
Every other year Celia, a district nurse, brought their kids back home to Kiltevna and Galway and their Irish relatives have played a big part in their upbringing.
“We came home a lot,” Westgaard says. “Either I was here or they (relatives) were coming to us every summer. I’ve had great contact with my cousins and I’ve seen many Gaelic football matches. And of course my mother’s Irish brown bread keeps me going!”
He skis ‘classical’ cross-country style; in designated tracks rather than with a skating action.
On his Winter Olympic debut, he will ski distances from the sprint (1.6km) to 15km, 30km, and 50km. The 50km is his favourite. While visiting Ireland last winter, he did the Galway Marathon — on rollerskates.
His training includes lots of bike work and he likes to play soccer off-season to keep ticking over but largely it is a daily slog of running and skiing, clocking up 150km on heavy weeks because “I am a long-distance runner on skis”.
Cross-country skiers have aerobic fitness levels to match professional cyclists and his resting heart-rate is just 37 beats per minute.
But it hasn’t been easy for him to race on the World Cup circuit due to his geography. The island has shorter winters than the Norwegian mainland, much poorer snow and very few races.
So when it came time for his senior schooling his parents sent him to a sports boarding school three hours away.
He’s now a third-year sports science student at a university in Meraker, near Trondheim, that also specialises in cross-country and biathlon training and attracts some of Norway’s top young skiing talent.
Westgaard is coached there by Frode Estil, a Norwegian ‘classical’ cross-country legend, who was a double Olympic champion in Salt Lake City (2002) and a five-time world champion and multiple medallist.
He is, technically, a tiny fish in a pond teeming with some of the globe’s best cross-country racers.
Norway is also now producing some of the best downhill exponents in the world with alpine skiers like Henrik Kristoffersen, Aksel Lund Svindal, and Kjetil Jansrud also expected to shine in PyeongChang.
To qualify for the Olympics he had to be in the world’s top 500 and get enough international ranking points to make the A standard.
He finished 49th in the 15km at the World Championships in Finland last year but has a particularly taxing schedule in PyeongChang before racing the 50km on the final day.
So why did an Irish-Norwegian kid who grew up on a tiny island not conducive to it still pick such a gruelling sport?
“I like hard training,” he grins. “I really like interval sessions, going up the hill, giving as hard as you can. You get to test your limits and, in a strange way, I quite enjoy that. I just love it.”
Thomas Westgaard’s Olympic events: Skiathlon 15kmx2 (Feb 11), Sprint Classic (Feb 13), Free 15km (Feb 16) and 50km Classic (Feb 24).
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
