Ready for takeoff: Inside NRK’s camera plans for the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships 2025 cross country and ski jumping in Trondheim

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 Granåsen 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, Øyvind 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 Øyvind [Nyborg, NRK Sports’ director for the cross country] has been with the organisers out in the tracks in Granåsen 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 thirds of its equipment if making up the tally, including the three rail cams, with just certain specific types of equipment being hired in.

Skretteberg: It’s very hard to make ski jumping interesting

Spectacular views of ski jumping

Onto the ski jumping camera set up, Skretteberg says: “We have this foundation, the regular cameras that we have to have covering the sport to be able to document what is going on. But of course we have many special cameras as well to try to give the viewers spectacular views, which is very important, and of course, the FPV drone we have been using for ski jumping here now for some years.”

On the FPV drone, Skretteberg notes: “We started to work with this company called Above Media [a specialist in drone services owned by former ski athletes], so it was easy for FIS, the International Ski Federation, to approve these guys be able to fly close to the athletes so viewers could take part in how to jump down this hill.”

Skretteberg continues on the drones from Above Media: “They also have a new camera which we tested out an the World Cup in November. This is a digital stabilised camera, which has mainly been developed to serve Formula One. It gives a very smooth picture; it’s almost like having a steady cam on the drone, so the horizon is always level and also the quality of the camera is very good. Besides from that drone, we have also a large drone from NRK, one of our own, to show the grand feeling about the large arena and the towers and the big crowds.”

Comments Hansen: “The jumping hill in Granåsen is completely new. We have had some competitions there, but it’s pretty much brand new. And we have also been into that project with the architects all the way through, to get our camera positions right. So that’s also been a lot of work even before [NRK] got the World Championships, because we knew that this hill is going to have some World Cups and everything, so we were eager to get all that in place.”

The new ski jumping hill in Granåsen consists of two slopes: a large hill (HS138) and a normal hill (HS105). These slopes were built in 2021 to replace the old slopes and modernise the facility to World Cup standards.

View the ski jump camera plan

Click on the image to see a larger version

On the overall camera plan for the ski jumping, Skretteberg says: “We’re using a cable cam for both hills because here we have first a normal hill or small hill, and the large hill. So we have the cable that we switch position during the middle of the Champs.

“We will also use many small and common PTZ cameras, and small cameras to be able to catch situations going on backstage,” notes Skretteberg. He says that one of the difficulties of shooting ski jumping is making it interesting for viewers and trying to expose the personalities and histories of the athletes. “That’s very important for this event, because in ski jumping, they start where they start and they end where they end, which is quite easy to catch, but it’s also very hard to make that interesting.

“So we try to put out many cameras for covering the backstage area to find small stories to show the hero, to show athletes from each nation, not with helmets and goggles on all the time, because that’s one of the hard things about this sport; they’re doing the same thing all over and again, so we are trying to find the stories.”

“We have put up extra [mobile network transmission] antennas, paying a lot of money to the telecoms industry. But this is helping us out with 5G, allowing us to be wherever we want to be, and that’s very important.”

NRK has also been testing out the Atom 500 camera for the ski jumping, “which is a 10-times slowmo camera for showing the takeoff, which is quite important for how you are going to achieve lift during your jump,” says Skretteberg.

Skretteberg continues: “And besides that, we will also use the Sony FX3 Full-Frame Cinema Camera for covering with a gimbal. Here we are going to transmit from this camera with LiveU,” he says. In the ski jumping, the Sony FX3 cameras will be looking for emotions from the spectators as well as the athletes, transmitting over 5G. The private 5G network is being provided to NRK by mobile operator, Telia.

He adds: “We’re using LiveU in [various positions for] ski jumping and cross country, so we have put up extra [mobile network transmission] antennas, paying a lot of money to the telecom industry. But this is helping us out with 5G to be able to be wherever we want, and that’s very important. It’s quite far from the top of the hill to the bottom, so this is an extra add-on for trying to find these small pieces of emotional things that we normally don’t have the space or money for during a World Cup.”

The FIS Nordic World Ski Championships takes place at the Granåsen Arena, Trondheim, Norway from 26 February to 9 March

Read more:

• Focused on the slopes: How production partner NRK has prepared for the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships 2025
• Goggles and athletes: NRK outlines how it will excite younger viewers with coverage of the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships 2025