The Ski Pole That Norway Will Never Forget
“Hvor var du da Oddvar Brå brakk staven?” (“Where were you when Oddvar Bra broke
his pole?”) has become the country’s most beloved and recurring question.
For years, a national newspaper ran a feature every Monday asking, “Where were you when Oddvar Bra broke his pole?” Hundreds of people weighed in.
“I don’t know what he was thinking, but he didn’t let me pass,” Savyalov said.
By sheer happenstance, the pole handed to him during the race — by a friend who made a habit of running
alongside Norwegian skiers — was exactly the same length as the broken one, 147.5 centimeters.
“I just remember a shadow coming from left, with a pole,” said Bra, speaking through an interpreter.
Bra’s broken pole is kept in a glass box in the lobby of a hotel near the outdoor arena where the race occurred, displayed like a national treasure.
Watch the final minutes of the race and you can imagine a very different rendering of the same story, one that lionizes Savyalov.
“We never had any enmity, we never hated each other,” Savyalov said.
“Let him get a pole, man!” shouts the sportscaster for what is then Norway’s only national TV station.
If anyone deserves blame for the collision, he said, it’s Savyalov, who knew
that hill was Bra’s last chance to pass him and drifted ever so slightly to the left in an effort at blocking.