>> ^conan:

is there any sport less interesting to watch than ski jump? biathlon maybe? even seeing a new world record being set is boring.


Ever watch yacht racing? You don't even have any background context to get a sense of the speed. It's just waves, a horizon, and a boat. Also, it takes substantially longer to finish a race.

is there any sport less interesting to watch than ski jump? biathlon maybe? even seeing a new world record being set is boring.

Upvote for the music alone, although i had no clue making a ski-jump involved so much heavy machinery. I would have thought it was nothing but well.. snow.

>> ^robbersdog49:
How did he not break his legs landing like that!


Snow isn't hard.

Your video, Best Freestyle Ski Jump of '010 WARNING: CRAZINESS, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

The "danger" thing is obvious nonsense - that's not to say it isn't dangerous, but I don't see any reason it would be more dangerous for women.

I think womens' ski jumping is probably viable - but I don't think they're being unreasonable in some of the requirements. For example, the video says there "will be" a world championship in 2009, while the guy says there needs to have been a certain number of world championships. I can see this requirement being waived for a new sport that seems to be on its way up - but there's no reason to waive it for womens' ski jumping. The facilities have been around forever, so there's no reason there couldn't have been world championships and such long ago if there was sufficient interest. If they have world championships for a few years, I imagine their Olympic bid could go better later - but to do that they'll need to get some interest going.

And, yes, I do think there should be strong evidence of interest before its included. If we're just going to go with "there must be gender parity" then I look forward to mens' rhythmic gymnastics. Do you think there's never been a guy who wants to do rhythmic gymnastics? I'm sure there has been, but it's not at a high enough level to justify inclusion at the Olympics and I think the standards for this have probably served them well.

That said, in general I think they should be shrinking the number of Olympic events in the category of "things few people are interested in, but that we've always just sort of had in there". Screw tradition, and screw the 100 kinds of luge, bobsled and skulls, 2400 varieties of swimming and 900 weight categories of weight lifting. I think they should trim this back, leaving a shorter schedule of events where each medal has more meaning.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'skiing, hang gliding, slope, splat' to 'skiing, hang gliding, ski jump, slope, flying, splat, face plant, ouch, fail, landing' - edited by kulpims

Tags for this video have been changed from 'ski jumping, norwegian, german, ski, jump' to 'ski jumping, norwegian, german, ski, jump, planica, slovenia, ski flying' - edited by kulpims

Being a Finn I do watch a certain amount of ski jumping, and no, that ramp at the end isn't there when people jump. It's probably just there to "simulate" the jumping motion of a ski jumper (infact, I think they explain that in the video).

I do think rolling resistance does play a part in all this, just not sure how big a part. The F1 tyre is slightly heavier (longer jump), has a slightly smaller radius (longer jump, according to arvana) than the sports car tyre, and jumps the shortest. What I know of F1 tyres is that they are very very sticky and have very poor rolling resistance (that is "lots of it"). Also of course it's way wider and hence has more drag, but that isn't enough to explain the difference. So yeah, I think we need more testing. I live only a few kilometers from the Puijo K-120 hill (also has two smaller ones) and am going to find out what it would take to get them to let me try this. =)

But what we really need is someone trying this on the mother of all ski jumping hills, the Planica (K-185, record 239+m, Ahonen jumped even longer but couldn't stay up) with a sturdy ramp that can take on the 220kg tyre. Also we need rocket boosters to get the speed up and over 200kmh. =)

Nicely found Deano! Damn, I searched for every word I could come up with related to ski jumping snow drift accidents. "Montage of hits" just never popped into my head.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

ski jump, or ski fall?

Physics wise he's lucky he fell exactly when he did. Transferring the vertical force to lateral probably saved his bones from breaking.(same idea as ski jumping) The windshield acted as a shock absorber.

>> ^Trancecoach:
kinda like a flying squirrel... with that suit, and those specially-winged skis.. (oops, did i just suggest he cheated?)


Show me the man who can fly without equipment.

If its recognized gear and available to all entrants, then thats cool. I don't call a rally driver a cheat for having a car.

TheSofaKing> that's because what you saw was "ski jumping" while the correct term for the crazy stunt seen in this video is "ski flying" - the only difference being of course the size of the hill. the jumpers on these big hills effectively use a so-called V technique and glide along the curvature of the hill on this cushion the air provides at speeds around 100km/h. there is also a separate world cup competition in skiflying. the record jump was performed in Slovenia at Planica ski center where most of the record flights of the past decades took place. as you can see we slovenes are a bit crackpot about skiflying

Wow...haven't watched ski jumping since the mid eighties..back in the 70 and 90 m days. Sure has come a long way.