Ski Jumping
This the incredible, high-flying history of ski jumping
230 years ago Norwegian mountain farmers invented ski jumping. Today, professionals like Ryōyū Kobayashi fly 291m on huge, perfectly shaped ski jumps. Find out how they got this far.
Part of this story
One question must be allowed at the beginning: who comes up with the idea of jumping off a snow-covered hill on skis, flying through the air like a bird and - in the best case scenario - landing back on skis 100m and more further down in the valley?
01
How ski jumping came into the world
What sounds like an ill-conceived test of courage was started by mountain farmers from the Norwegian province of Telemark in the 18th century. During the long, snowy winter months, they crossed the surrounding slopes on skis and used small hills for jumps that made their days a little bit brighter. The enthusiasm for the jumps on these descents grew and eventually led to a completely independent sport - ski jumping.
Modern day ski jumps mix precise science and pure adrenaline
© Bartek Wolinski/Red Bull Content Pool
The first offical ski jump was 9.5m. Today, jumpers can fly more than 200m
© Kin Marcin/Red Bull Content Pool
The first person to record this new phenomenon in writing was a Dutch naval officer, Cornelius de Jong. In 1796, he described how soldiers from a Norwegian ski company used the roofs of houses and barns as ski jumps and discovered that the landing force could be greatly reduced if it was transferred to a slope instead of flat ground. A small but not insignificant discovery on the way to modern day ski jumping.
It also made it possible that today, some 230 years later, people like the Japanese ski jumper Ryōyū Kobayashi can fly 291m! But more on that later...
02
Four ski jumping milestones on the road to modernity
Modern ski jumping would not be what it is today without four formative events in the 19th century:
- 1809: Lieutenant Olaf Rye jumps the first officially measured ski jump over a self-built snow hill. He reaches a distance of 9.5m.
- 1860: Norwegian Sondre Norheim breaks the distance record that had stood for 33 years and jumps 30.5m. At the time jumpers still used ski poles to keep his balance during the in-run. Norheim is a real trailblazer however: he was the first athlete to use ski bindings.
- 1879: The first official ski jumping hill is built in Kristiania, now Oslo, where the Huseby Hill Race is held every year from then on.
- 1883: Torju Torjussen develops the telemark landing, which is still regarded as the best way to successfully land a jump on a slope.
03
Ski jumping becomes an Olympic sport in 1924
With the founding of the first ski clubs and schools in Germany, Austria and Switzerland at the end of the 18th century, ski jumping also reaches Central Europe. Sondre Norheim, the record breaker of 1860, had long since emigrated to the USA in order to get the masses interested in his sport via ski jumps in the circus. Norheim is probably also the reason why many technical developments in ski jumping originated in the USA.
Ski jumping then became an Olympic discipline in 1924 at the first Winter Olympic Games in Chamonix, France. The same year also saw the start of the long tradition of the Nordic World Ski Championships, which were held annually until the beginning of the Second World War.
The appearance of the legendary British ski jumper Michael 'Eddie the Eagle' Edwards at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Canada, where he finished last and yet became a worldwide sporting hero pushed ski jumping into the global spotlight like never before in its history. It was an incredible story that was even made into a film in 2016.
04
A quantum leap thanks to science and ski jumping hills
In the middle of the 19th century, the growing interest in ski jumping increasingly attracted the attention of scientists, who tried to revolutionize jumping and flying - and succeeded. By simulating airflow conditions in the air, it became clear that a jumper holding their arms backwards during the jump had huge aerodynamic advantages over the traditional style of jumping, in which athletes stretched their arms forwards during the take-off and moved them in a circle in the air. The new style was given the name 'Däscher Style' after the Swiss ski jumper Andreas Däscher, who pioneered the technique in competition.
The first person to use the new knowledge to break the previously magical 100m mark was Sepp Bradl in 1936. The Austrian out-jumped all his competitors in Planica, Slovenia, where the first purpose-built ski flying hill had recently been constructed, and became the first person to fly over the previously unthinkable mark.
The first plastic covered ski jumps were built in the early 1950s to enable ski jumping to be trained during the summer months. The spiritual father of the new plastic covering – which consisted of industrially manufactured plastic sheets that were cut into strings and then bundled back into mats similar to AstroTurf – was the former East Germany coach Hans Renner.
It was another real milestone in the development of the sport. Jumps covered with coconut matting had already been tried out at the Busch Circus in 1905 and later experiments were also carried out with pine needles, almond shells and all kinds of snow substitutes – all without success. Then came the matting ski jump, which is still in use today.
Since the summer of 1994, the FIS Grand Prix of specialized ski jumpers has been held every year on the world's plastic covered hills and is a welcome change for all athletes and fans of ski jumping during the long off-season. Synthetic hills are more important however for teaching young ski jumpers and year-round training for professional athletes.
Synthetic covered jumping hills have allowed pros to train year-round
© Predrag Vuckovic/Red Bull Content Pool
05
Higher, faster, further - and for the first time live on TV
In the 1950s, ski jumping experienced a real boom, part in thanks to the introduction of the Four Hills Tournament. German state broadcaster ARD broadcast the New Year's ski jumping competition live from Garmisch-Partenkirchen for the first time on January 1, 1956. Technical developments also continue to advance ski jumping, such as the use of computers to measure distances since the 1960s.
New media coverage and technical progress meant that ski jumpers from 19 countries were already competing in the 1980 Four Hills Tournament – a record – and in the 1990–91 season qualification was introduced in order to limit the number of participants in the actual competition.
06
Professionalisation and diversification of ski jumping
The unstoppable growth and enthusiasm for ski jumping led to a differentiation of the actual sport at the beginning of the 1970s. The first new offshoot to be introduced was ski flying. The biggest difference: while ski jumping involves jumping off the hill at around 56mph, the slightly larger flying hill allows jumpers to reach speeds of 65mph and more, meaning greater distances jumps and an even bigger spectacle.
Ski flying hills like in Bad Mitterndorf have allowed for huge jumps
© Fabian Hain/Red Bull Content Pool
The milestones in the diversification of ski jumping at a glance:
- 1972: The first Ski Flying World Championships are held on the first and only ski flying hill to date in Planica, Slovenia.
- 1980: Introduction of an annual FIS Ski Jumping World Cup. The first winner of a World Cup competition is the Austrian Toni Innauer and the first overall winner is his compatriot Hubert Neuper.
- 1982: The team competition is included in the program of the Nordic World Ski Championships. In 1988, the team competition also becomes an Olympic event.
- 1983: The official distinction between normal hills, large hills and ski flying hills is established and still used today.
- 1993: The Continental Cup is founded as second division of ski jumping.
07
A random product becomes the standard style
In ski jumping, every technical innovation to date has also changed the athletes' jumping style. First, ski poles were ditched and later the arms were no longer pulled forwards in flight, but stretched back next to the body. One of the more recent innovations was the emergence of the V-style flying position.
The perfect 'V-Style', as demonstrated by Stephan Embacher
© Kin Marcin/Red Bull Content Pool
During one of his training jumps, Swede Jan Boklöv discovered by chance that a better lift, and therefore greater distances, could be achieved if the skis were angled into a 'V' in the air. While Boklöv initially received significant deductions from the judges for his unusual flying style, the V-style quickly established itself as the new standard after Boklöv won the World Cup overall in 1988–89.
08
Chasing records for ever longer distances
What the Austrian Sepp Bradl started in 1936 with his flight over 100m in Planica has since become perhaps the last great challenge for the best ski jumpers in the world – the hunt for new record distances.
In March 1994, again in Planica, Austrian Andreas Goldberger was the first to fly past the 200m mark, although he was unable to stop after landing. This meant that Finland's Toni Nieminen's 203m flight landed on the same day is officially recorded as the first flight over 200m.
The 239m jump by Norwegian Bjoern Einar Romoeren in 2005 was one of the longest standing, until the conversion of the Vikersundbakken in Vikersund, Norway, into the world's largest ski jumping hill in 2010 launched a raft of new records. On March 18, 2017, Austrian Stefan Kraft set a new world record of 253.5m on the 'Monsterbakken'.
09
Ryōyū Kobayashi flies 291m to smash the ski jump world record
Since then, only Japan's Ryōyū Kobayashi has managed to beat Kraft's 2017 distance, when he flew an incredible 291m in April 2024 in Akureyri, Iceland. Kobayashi's jump was set out of competition, not an official ski flying hill, but on a 300m hill built on a mountainside especially for his feat. This in no way makes Kobayashi's incredible record jump any less impressive.
Ryōyū Kobayashi flew to a new world record on a special hill in Iceland
© Predrag Vuckovic/Red Bull Content Pool
Kobayashi jumped in incredible 291m!
© Joerg Mitter/Red Bull Content Pool
The fact is, the development that ski jumping has undergone since Olaf Rye's first official 9.5m jump in 1809 is at least as dizzying as what champion ski jumpers like Ryōyū Kobayashi or Andreas Wellinger are conjuring up in the sky these days.
Part of this story