Gavin and Allison Fall Down: Ski Jumping Edition

Gavin and Allison Fall Down is a recurring series where we try Norwegian winter sports and recount our shortcomings for your amusement. This week: Ski Jumping.

 

The Granåsen ski jumping park is located 20 minutes southwest of Trondheim by bus. The main attractions are the K-90 and K-124 hills, and competition can be viewed from a stadium that seats more than 20,000. Ski jumping hills are denoted by their K-point, which indicates the hill’s steepest point in meters. It also serves as a “par” of sorts, i.e., competitors of a certain level are expected to reach that point. Granåsen hosts an annual world-cup event and several other lower level competitions.

The sheer intensity of this sport should be appreciated before going any further. World-class ski jumpers on the K-124 hill reach speeds of over 60 mph on the 93-meter in-run (ramp), before flying substantially further than a football field and landing at an angle of 33.5 degrees. (As a point of reference, you will often see signs on the side of mountain roads warning you to take care if the gradient is steeper than 8%.)

The video below is from a competition at Granåsen in January. It’s 17 minutes long, but watch the first 30 seconds or so and you’ll get the idea.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9sueeRWLOs]

Behind the stadium are five additional hills — sizes K-5, K-10, K-38, K-60, and K-78 — that are used for training. All hills are equipped with plastic mats that simulate the experience of skiing on snow, allowing the facility to be used year round.

Gavin and I have really been trying to lean into this Norwegian adventure, so when the opportunity arose to try ski jumping (skihopp in Norwegian) at a world-class facility, coached by a club that’s produced olympic medalists, we couldn’t well pass it up.

I did not tell my mom we were going to do this.

How we set it up

We’ve been hanging out at Granåsen a fair amount because it also has a paved biathlon course, which is a favorite location for serious skiers to train on roller skis in the summer — or in our case, for amateur skiers to practice on roller skis without fear of traffic or unforeseen large hills. Plus, it provides great atmosphere, because we can occasionally watch the ski jumpers practice on the K-90 and K-124 hills while we totter around.

It’s been a mystery how someone gets started in ski jumping, and whether we might be able to try it. I started looking in to it by googling “Tronderhopp,” a word I saw on the side of a trailer on one of our roller ski outings. That took me down an internet rabbit hole to the Kontact Oss page of the Byåsen Skiklub website, where I submitted the following message via webform:

Hi Byåsen Skiklub, my husband and I recently moved to Trondheim from the USA, and we would like to take a lesson in ski jumping. Can you recommend a course or instructor, or otherwise advise us on how we can learn? Thank you very much, Allison Taylor

To my astonishment, this is what we got back:

Setting the scene

We arrived at 5:30 pm on Tuesday, September 12 at the Granåsen ski park, 30 minutes early for practice. There was a group of very young children frolicking around in the grass, and we thought there was no way this group of adorable four- and five-year-olds would be our class partners (as it turns out, they were). Two guys were wetting down the plastic mats on the K-10 landing field, to remove friction.  Gavin was uncharacteristically quiet — either feeling nervous about the upcoming lesson or bashful about his new skiing tights.

We finally get up the nerve to talk to the water sprayers, and ask for Olav Hansen, our designated point of contact. Olav invited us in the club’s ski storage shed and gave us each a pair of cross country skis. These skis would work with our roller ski boots, which was great because as you might guess there are no size 15 mens ski jumping boots in stock for the kids practice.

Olav gave us some theory and technique as well. His main piece of advice was that grass has much more friction than the landing mats, and thus it acts as a break at the bottom of the hill. So, you essentially want to sit down when you reach the bottom so you don’t lurch forward and land on your nose. (It is a testament to our poor skiing that this never actually became a problem for us.)

He also made a couple of jokes about whether we had health and life insurance. And with that, we were invited to try it.

Starting out

As it turns out, there isn’t actually that much theory to teach a beginner. You just have to start throwing yourself off a mountain until you get the feel for it. The most important thing we discovered is that despite all your fears, you really have to commit – i.e., lean very far forward – to jump correctly. To see what I mean, go back to the video above to see how the professionals are way out over their skis.

We started by skiing down the landing mat only…

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ny1piAzH5dI&w=560&h=315]

…and then moved up to the jump, folding into the line of four- and five-year-old fearless kids. On the K-5 hill, you start by holding onto the hand rails while fitting your skis into the tracks on the in-run. Then, when you are ready, you lean forward and let go. Because we were using cross country skis, the skis did not totally fill the tracks, meaning that slightly more effort was needed to stabilize your legs on the descent. However, the hill is too small to properly use the larger, heavier ski-jumping skis.

 

The moment of truth comes at the bottom of the in run, where you really need to lean into the jump. (I usually failed to commit, meaning I was leaning too far back.)  Then, you either stick the landing or you don’t, sliding the rest of the way down on your backside.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpDiYs3L3WQ&w=560&h=315]

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLGEDIK3iSE&w=560&h=315]

At this point, Olav discreetly told Gavin that he thought it would be a good idea if we put on helmets – in order to be good role models for the kids, of course.

Surprisingly, it seemed like it would be difficult to really hurt ourselves in this endeavor. It felt much safer than I expected. The jump was only about one foot off the ground, and we never got up very much speed. We always seemed to fall in a way that we landed on soft tissue. But it did seem like starting as a young child would be the way to go.

The second-smallest ski jump

As it turns out, Gavin is a natural ski jumper — he was pretty good at it! After about 8-10 jumps, Olav promoted Gavin to the K-10 hill. I’ll let him describe the view from the top:

[Gavin]: We were pretty objectively ridiculous at this event — we’re not good skiers, we loomed over all the other students, we were speaking English, etc.  Of course, we didn’t need to worry about the children — they were young enough to be largely confused, rather than judgmental about it.  However, the parents were our own age.

In general, we have found that Norwegians generally studiously avoid eye contact with strangers, particularly if those strangers are doing something unusual.  However, I caught them making faces at each other, when we skiied into the gravel, or fell down on the in-run, or put on bicycle helmets rather than skiing helmets.  After all this though, when I was sent to the top of the K-10 hill, after fumbling around getting my skis in place (seriously, I had no idea how to get into position), I finally looked up to see: the undivided attention and full eye contact of every person there.  Nobody was shy about wanting to watch what happened next.  This was gonna be nuts.[/Gavin]

But Gavin totally crushed it. Check it out:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAKaLFI4gfM&w=560&h=315]

So was it fun? Yeah, it was super fun. I was terrified through the whole experience, but I’m proud of myself for pushing through my fears. And I’m proud of Gavin for being awesome at it.

We’re both extremely grateful to Ole, Olav, and the Byåsen Skiklub for letting us have this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. They lent us equipment, coached us, and generally made us feel very welcome at their facility. It was a special experience, and one that we’ll never forget. Tusen Takk!

Here’s our ski jumping mashup:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_BGxhjus6I&w=560&h=315]