From Russia with COVID

May 16, 2024

"...our rest was short-lived as my teammate and I were jolted awake in the middle of the night by pounding fists on our hotel room door. We looked at each other, confused and half-awake, as four men in hazmat suits stormed into the room and started yelling at us in Russian."

My first visit to Russia was, in a word, crazy. In November of 2021, my teammates and I departed from Lillehammer, Norway, to fly to Nizhny Tagil, Russia. Nizhny Tagil is a small city deep in Ural Mountains of Russia that happens to have a ski jump and was hosting the first event of the 2021/2022 Continental Cup (COC) Circuit. We flew from Oslo to Germany, then to Moscow, before our final flight to Yekaterinburg.

The flight from Moscow to Yekaterinburg somewhat foreshadowed what awaited us in Nizhny. We boarded what looked like a Cold War-era plane; a two-propeller, all-grey aircraft with a black serial number on the side. It not only looked like an old plane but flew like one, too. The flight was a rollercoaster, the old plane tossed around by turbulence. Once we landed, it was a quick two-hour drive to Nizhny.

Nizhny is a small industrial town that seemed as if it hadn’t quite woken up from the Soviet era. Big grey buildings and public transportation buses, again grey, with black serial numbers on the side. We were told to minimize our time outside the hotel and not to wear USA gear if we did go out. Despite these warnings, we decided to take a morning stroll around the town the following day. Despite the somewhat monochromatic color scheme, there was some pretty cool art around the town, including statues and murals that seemed to exalt and celebrate laborers and the working class. 

Eventually, it was time to get on the ski jump and do what we really went there for - competing. I really enjoyed the jump in Nizhny and was fortunate to have my jumping click for that competition. I ended up jumping into second place in the provisional competition round (PCR), and then once again into second place during the competition, with the farthest jump of the day, leaving me only two seconds behind the leader going into the cross-country ski race. After the jump competition, all the athletes lined up for yet another COVID-19 nasal test (all athletes were required to show proof of a negative test before entering Russia). Then it was time to race! The course was shortened significantly due to a lack of snow, so the 10-kilometer ski race took place over six laps. The race did not go well for me, and I ended up dropping back to 28th place. That was a bummer, but it was my first time scoring points in an international COC!

After the ski race, we drove back to our hotel, ate dinner, and retired to our rooms to rest for the next competition the following day. Unfortunately, our rest was short-lived as my teammate and I were jolted awake in the middle of the night by pounding fists on our hotel room door. We looked at each other, confused and half-awake, as four men in hazmat suits stormed into the room and started yelling at us in Russian. One of the men, we realized, was our coach who informed us that I had tested positive for COVID-19. I was totally asymptomatic and felt fine. Somewhat distraught, I asked if there was any way to retest in case of a false positive. Unfortunately, they insisted that I needed to be taken to the hospital via ambulance, two hours away in Yekaterinburg.

In a crazy flurry, I threw all my clothes into my duffel bag and was escorted out of the hotel into an ambulance. My coach, Gregor, was luckily able to find a FIS translator in the time it took me to pack my bags, who agreed to accompany me in the ambulance and explain what was going on. It was a long drive to Yekaterinburg. The translator informed me that it was policy in Russia to hold people in the hospital until they tested negative. I was pretty concerned about this because there had been several cases back in the states where people continued to test positive long after the standard 10-day quarantine period. My Russian visa was only valid for another seven days, so I would be in trouble at the border if I was held any longer than that.

Gregor met us at the hospital, and we went into a back room to go through the admittance paperwork. Everything was in Russian. We told them that we would need the documents in English, but they said they only had Russian copies. Luckily, the translator was with us and made sure we didn’t agree to any aggressive treatments or the Russian Sputnik vaccine, which one of our teammates had been forcefully injected with a couple of weeks prior. The nurse then led me to my room: down a long hallway, through three doors that required an access card to unlock, then to my room, which had a double-door airlock entrance. I was in the pediatric hospital given that I was only 17 at the time, so the room was actually very colorful and bright. with a big bed, a desk, a bathroom, and a little TV screen. 

Every day looked something like this: In the morning, a nurse in a hazmat suit would come and take my vitals and administer a COVID test. Twice, the nurses took urine tests that didn’t seem necessary for COVID treatment. I continually had to decline blood tests, which they tried to conduct every day. We wondered if maybe they were testing for something else… As a side note, Brittney Griner, the women’s basketball player, was arrested in Russia only three months later. The nurse would also connect me to the hospital’s WiFi server, which required re-signing in every day. This was a necessity, not only to contact my family and teammates but also to communicate with the nurses who spoke no English. I enabled a Russian keyboard on my phone, and we passed the phone, with Google Translate open, back and forth to communicate.

Three times a day, a box of food with a meal and some fruit would slide through a little slit at the bottom of my door. I could always tell when it was coming because I’d hear the airlock activate before the food came sliding through. The food was… well, they say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here are some pictures of my meals: 

Gregor was super helpful during this whole experience, and after seeing the pictures I was sending to the team, he saved me one day by smuggling in a pizza and a whole bag of candy. That pizza tasted incredible.

Once a day, another hazmat suit would come in, and I would stand in the corner as they sprayed down and cleaned the whole room. That was pretty much my only human contact other than FaceTime and texting. Twice a day, people would come into my room, but besides that, there was no one allowed in, and no leaving the room. A hospital-jail of sorts.

I ended up staying there for 10 days before the nurse finally returned to my room with a negative test result. By that point, the team and my coach had already left Russia to go to the next COC (they wouldn’t have been able to stay anyway because the visas were running out, and on top of that, their mentality was to get out of Russia before another athlete got stuck), so I had to find a way to get to the airport. I packed up my bags and was escorted to the front desk where yet another roadblock awaited me: There was a hospital bill due, and I could not leave the hospital without paying it. Great. My flight was in two hours, and I was stuck at the hospital. They only accepted bank transfers, which meant that I had to get ahold of my parents, who were fast asleep in Alaska where it was 2 a.m. Luckily, my mom picked up on the second try, and the payment was worked out. FINALLY, after 10 long days in that room, I was out of the hospital. I’ve never felt so glad to step outside. The next hurdle: getting to the airport.

The hospital did not have any shuttles to the airport, but they offered to call me an Uber. At this point, I just wanted to get out of Russia, so I hopped in the car with some random Russian guy, and off we went. He didn’t utter a single word the entire drive, but his driving spoke volumes. The 45-minute trip to the airport took us about 20 minutes. Whenever a light turned red, he would whip us onto a side street, zipping through tight alleys before reemerging onto the main road. I gripped the ceiling handle so tightly my knuckles turned white. He navigated every turn like a rally driver, but he got us there in one piece, so hey, I can’t complain.

Russia was so crazy because almost everywhere we went, we encountered something wild, and the airport might have been the wildest. I checked in without any issues and was sitting at my gate, ready to board my flight to Moscow, when a homeless man came sprinting down the hall, chased by three security guards. Right in front of the gate, they pulled out their tasers, and he hit the ground hard. They took him into a little room across the hall, and for the remaining hour before my flight, I never saw him come out.

The flight to Moscow was smoother than our initial journey into Russia. Moscow was my last stop before reentering Europe, which meant I had to go through customs. The customs agent was displeased that I had overstayed my visa. I tried to explain that I was, in fact, attempting to LEAVE Russia and had been stuck in a hospital, but he was skeptical. He took me to a backroom and then vanished with my passport. After half an hour in the room, I began to lose hope that I’d make my plane and started to brainstorm what I would do if I was stuck in Moscow. However, five minutes later, he returned and instructed me to leave.

About three hours later, I landed in Munich, Germany—finally out of Russia. Being locked in a Russian hospital was one of the most bizarre experiences I’ve ever had, and I am immensely grateful to everyone behind the scenes who helped me get home. I also feel fortunate that I had the opportunity to see Russia before the war with Ukraine started and that I managed to leave when I did. Russia invaded Ukraine three months later, which would have made exiting the country incredibly difficult if the invasion had begun while I was still there.

I must say, all the Russian athletes I met were very kind individuals, people I look forward to seeing again in the future. It’s easy to generalize an entire population by the actions of their government, but it’s crucial to remember that they are individuals.

I hope you enjoyed this story! If you’d like to continue hearing tales like this one and would like to help support my skiing career, please consider donating to my GoFundMe page. You can find the GoFundMe on the “support” page of this website. If you’d like to be added to my email list to receive a notification whenever a new story is posted, send me your email address via the contact page on this website. Thanks!