Ski jumping

2018 Winter Olympic Games, Events

January 22, 2014

How They Train: Ski Jumping

TIME follows Nordic-combined athlete and Olympic silver medalist Todd Lodwick up a very tall ski tower in Lake Placid, New York, to see how he’s training for the winter Olympics in Vancouver. To watch more videos, check out: http://www.time.com/olympics.

Ski jumping has been included in the program of every Winter Olympic Games. From 1924 through 1956, the competition involved jumping from one hill whose length varied from each edition games to the next. Most historians have placed this length at 70 meters and have classified this as the large hill. (Recent information from the FIS offices in Switzerland have had the K-points from 1924 to 1956 determined as shown below). In 1960, the ski jump hill was standardized to 80 meters. In 1964, a second ski jump, the normal hill at 70 meters (K90) was added along with the 80 meters (K120) large hill. The length of the large hill run in 1968 increased from 80 meters to 90 meters (K120). The team large hill event was added in 1988. By 1992, the ski jumping competitions were referred by their K-point distances rather than their run length prior to launching from the ski jump (90 meters for the normal hill and 120 meters for the large hill, respectively) and have been that way ever since. For the 2006 Winter Olympics, the normal hill was designated as HS106 (K95) while the large hill was designated as HS140 (K125).

On April 6, 2011, the International Olympic Committee officially accepted women’s ski jumping into the official Olympic program for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.