List of The Longest Ski Jumps

List Of The Longest Ski Jumps

Ski jumping is a winter sport in which participants compete on length and style on a jump in a ski jumping hill. As of 2011, the longest ski jump is 246.5 meters, set by Johan Remen Evensen in Vikersundbakken. Ski jumping has traditionally focused on a combination of style and length, and it was therefore early seen as unimportant in many milieus to have the longest jump. Particularly the International Ski Federation (FIS) has largely been opposed to the inflation in hill sizes and setting of distance records. For instance, no world records have been set in Olympic, FIS Nordic World Ski Championships, Holmenkollen Ski Festival or Four Hills Tournament hills, as these have never been among the largest in the world.

Ski jumping originated in Norway, and has been practiced since time immemorial, using handmade temporary hills. The first record is credited to Olaf Rye, a soldier who set up a show spectated by his fellow soldiers in 1808, reaching 9.5 meters on Vardebakken hill in Eidsberg, Norway. This small hill was at Lekum gård next to the Eidsberg's church.

Sondre Norheim, credited as the father of modern skiing, made the second official record at 19.5 meters in 1868. Tim Ashburn says in his book The history of ski jumping that Norheim's longest jump in the circular track in Haugli ground in 1868 should have been measured at 31.5 meters (103 ft), but that newspapers in Christiania reported that the length "was little exaggerated", so official record is everywhere written as 19.5 meters (64 ft).

The sport quickly spread to Finland, the United States and Canada, where some of the subsequent records were set. Early jumping competitions were only scored by style, and it was seen as disruptive to attempt to jump further. Not until 1901 was a scoring system for distance introduced. With the construction of Bloudkova Velikanka in Planica, Yugoslavia, in 1934, the more extreme ski flying was introduced. With one exception, since then all of the length records have been set in six of the world's seven ski flying hills, of which five remain in use. In 1936, Josef Bradl was the first to reach the 100 meter mark. FIS was long opposed to ski flying, and it has never been included in the Olympic or Nordic World Ski Championships. However, since 1972, the FIS Ski-Flying World Championships was introduced, and there have also been annual ski flying jumps in as part of the FIS Ski Jumping World Cup. The first to reach 200 meters was Toni Nieminen in 1994; at the time, ski jumpers did not receive distance points fro the part of the jumps exceeding 191 meters.

The distance is measured from the lip of the takeoff to the place on the hill where the skier's back foot is when he touches the ground. To qualify, the jump must be made in a sanctioned competition, or official trial or qualification runs for these, with a system to control the actual length. To win a competition, a jumper needs both distance and style, the latter of which is achieved by attaining a proper Telemark landing; therefore jumpers are not motivated to jump as far as possible, only as far necessary to attain a good landing. Jumps are invalid if the jumper falls, defined as touching the ground with his hands or body before reaching the fall line. Originally, jumps were measured in alen, but this has since been replaced by meters, with an accuracy of half a meter. Some old United States and Canadian records were recorded in feet. Traditionally, people would stand along the hill for every meter, and a crew member would raise their hand if the jumper landed on their meter. Today this is done with camera technology.