Athlete profile: Erling Jevne

Posted: Tue February 3, 1998 at 5:00 PM ET

Athlete notes

There never seems to be a quiet moment in the life of Erling Jevne...hailing from the most crazed cross-country ski land in the world, he competes to the screams and cheers of rabid fans...in practice it is the yells and commands of his coach and Norwegian teammates...even when he comes home, the sounds and noises of his children (Erik, 3 years, and Amalia-Liese, 1 ½ years) at play never seem to end...it is fitting then that the Lillehammer Olympic cross-country course lies just 20 km from Jevne's place of birth -- the alpine events of Haftjell just two km away... perhaps Jevne knew at birth that Olympic cheers would one day emanate from his valley...today he sometimes practices on the mountain which held the alpine events..."I've been skiing uphill at Haftjell," he says. "It takes me two hours to get to the top"...indeed, Jevne still lives and breathes the spirit of the Winter Games every day in Oyer, a town of 4,000 just outside of Lillehammer..."The '94 Olympics were homegrown for every Norwegian, but it was even a little more special for me," he says. "I could see the works go up every day as they prepared for the Games"...he talks about his only race at the '94 Olympics -- the 50 km -- with some disappointment..."The race was on the last day and it was very long to go to the Olympics and wait and wait and wait and wait," he laments. "It would have been better to race once before to take a little pressure off"...even though he did not feel he raced 100 percent he still finished fifth...last season he placed fourth overall in the standings including a second at the Hakuba Olympic test Events and a second in the 50 km at the 1997 World Championships in his native Norway...he celebrated that night on a boat in the Trondheim fjord, with good food and dancing -- Norwegian style...with all the noise and activity in Jevne's life, it comes as no surprise that Jevne's favorite hobby is fishing..."It is good for body and soul," he says...when he can, he spends a few days on the family's boat in the mountains fishing for trout and eating it himself...it is tough to have a family and be traveling all the time and it only gets tougher as the winter progresses...still, Jevne says his goals are to be on the relay team and compete well on a course that seems to suit him..."It has a long uphill and that is good for me," says Jevne...national team coach, Erik Roste, thinks Jevne prepared very well in the off-season and was an important part of the team work-outs..."Though Bjorn [Daehlie] is the leader, it is necessary for him to have people like Erling and Thomas Alsgård to push him"...Jevne speaks good English...