Informative Essay On Ski Jumping

Ski jumping as an Olympic sport deserves more recognition. Ski jumping was created and thought of in Norway, the first ski jumper being ole rye, a Norwegian army lieutenant. He decided to try something out, so he set up a jump with the assistance of his peers (who were also in the army) and his first jump was 9.5 meters, leading to the birth of the sport in 1809. Ski jumping first caught my eye while visiting my friend in Switzerland. He was quite an avid Ski jumper and even competed in several national competitions for the under 18 clubs. Me, being a novice skier had no business in ski jumping, however my friend decided I should come watch one of his practices. More often then not they will just be inside exercising they’re legs, but today the jump was completely unoccupied due to bad conditions, mainly being too icy. Long story short he totaled his leg and wrist, breaking his leg in 3 places and snapping his wrist, it was not a pretty sight but strangely it drew me closer to the sport as I now knew how dangerous it could be.

The longest ski jump ever recorded occurred on February 16th 2015 by Anders Fannemel, a ridiculous 251.5 meters. Let’s put that into perspective, a football field is 100 yards or 91 meters so he jumped over 2.5 footballs fields with nothing but a pair of skis and lots of practice. That is insane. A quote from Anders after
the jump "This longest jump is every ski jumper's dream. It's hard to compare with the Olympic medal. We are dreaming of the long jumps not the medals actually," This goes to show that they aren’t even doing it for the glory, but for their love and devotion to the sport.

Ski jumping has three different events, Individual normal hill, individual large hill and team (also occurring on the large hill). Anyone can pick up and understand ski jumping relatively quickly as it has a very simple scoring system. There are five judges and each judge can rate the jump from 0-20, the score of the jump is not based on the style or finesse of the jump but simply the length, put simpler the bigger the jump the larger the score. An interesting part of the scoring is that the top and bottom score are dropped and and average is made of the middle three scores, this is to ensure that no major bias occurs be it towards or against the skier.

Ski jumping can also appeal to women.
At the dawn of ski jumping and for years after it there was a lot of speculation regarding whether or not women should be allowed to compete in ski jumping. “In 1991, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced that all future Olympic sports must be opened to both genders, however, this excluded the original sports at the inaugural Olympic Winter Games in 1924, including ski jumping.” (Women’s Ski jumping USA) This has been the case for a long time, however the upcoming winter Olympics in Pyeong Chang, South Korea will be the first ever Olympics to host women’s ski
jumping.

In conclusion Ski jumping is an amazing sport, not only is its popularity rising but also its horizons are broadening as the acceptance of women to the sport is now in motion and many new ski jumping locations are being created allowing more people see the sport in the flesh, some of these locations include Kazakhstan, Italy, Canada and Estonia. Ski jumping is a very hard sport to access due to the need of proper location, equipment and experience as a skier so I understand it can be hard to relate to, but spectating the jumps require none of the above. Simply spectating for me is invigorating knowing that at any moment something could go wrong and seeing the years or effort that the skiers have put into their trade is astonishing, it is the most entertaining sport at the Olympics.