Burn Slush! The Reindeer Grand Prix

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 20 December 2016

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Competitive reindeer-racing is a popular sport across the Arctic Circle. In Finland, the season runs from November to April and good jockeys are local celebrities. They need strong biceps and serious guts: strapped onto cross-country skis they're hauled behind reindeer at up to 60km/hour. Meanwhile, the animals are trained to peak fitness. Owners give their reindeer massages and whisper last minute instructions in their ears. Cathy FitzGerald travels to the snowy north of Finland to find out more about the sport. She visits the little town of Inari, where the cappuccinos come with tiny antlers sketched in the foam and the local bar (PaPaNa, ‘The Reindeer Dropping’) serves pizza topped with bear salami. Each year, the top 24 fastest reindeer compete here to be crowned: The Reindeer King. They fly around a two-kilometre race track carved on the surface of icy Lake Inari to the cheers of hundreds of spectators. There’s a social side to the competition, of course: a winter village grows up around the track, where herders can browse for cow-bells, snow-mobiles and fox-fur hats. And at night, there’s dancing under the northern lights at Hotel Kultahovi, where Eero Magga croons his big hit, ‘Poromiehen Suudelma’ – ‘The Reindeer Herder’s Kiss’ – to an appreciative reindeer-racing crowd.

Picture: Competitors and their reindeer set off across the snow, Credit: Kirsten Foster

Transcript

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0:00.0	A snowy clearing in the Finnish forest.
0:05.0	The click of your ski boots.
0:10.0	Okay, let's go.
0:12.0	You reindeer in the starting box.
0:16.0	Take the reins and try to hold on.
0:20.0	Every spring, all over the Arctic circle people raise reined in.
0:28.0	In Siberia the jockeys ride behind on sleds.
0:32.0	In Sweden, Norway and Finland, its cross-country skis.
0:36.0	And Finland is where I am now. In Rovigny, home to Father Christmas,
0:42.0	and the second most northerly met Donald's in the world.
0:49.0	Rainier racing is big news here.
0:52.0	The title says that the reindeer we're running with the long tongue.
0:57.0	On the front page of the local paper the day I arrive.
1:00.1	They were hunting. Yeah, yeah. The reindeer in the photos are wild, fast and strong, more than capable of pulling a hefty reindeer herd off his feet.
1:10.0	Which is why I've decided to start my research into this strange sport with the slowest,
1:15.5	tameest, friendliest critter I can find.
1:20.6	For the BBC World Service, I'm Kathy Fitzgerald, and this is Burn Slash, the Reindeer Grand Prix. What's he cold? No school? A snowskoo. A sniff. Yeah. Yeah. But a new school. A sniff? Yeah, sniff.
1:45.0	My brain des code sniff. Yes.
1:47.0	If you want he goes forward and fast, you can swing the rope and if he goes well you just hang the rope on your hand
1:57.4	not too tight because then he thinks that you're going to slow down. I'm driving a sledge through a dark forest at night
2:07.2	with the help of sniff the rain deer. It's minus 20 and I'm wrapped up in a coat as thick as a duvet.
2:15.0	The path's narrow and as I drive along it I brush past trees covered in tukaloupe, tree snow.
	...

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