Ski Jumping - History

History

True ski jumping originated in Morgedal, Norway. Olaf Rye, a Norwegian lieutenant, was the first known ski jumper. In 1809, he launched himself 9.5 meters in the air in front of an audience of other soldiers. By 1862, ski jumpers were tackling much larger jumps and traveling longer. Norway's Sondre Norheim jumped 30 meters over a rock without the benefit of poles. His record stood for three decades. The first proper competition was held in Trysil. The first widely known ski jumping competition was the Husebyrennene, held in Oslo in 1879, with Olaf Haugann of Norway setting the first world record for the longest ski jump at 20 metres. The annual event was moved to Holmenkollen from 1892, and Holmenkollen has remained the pinnacle of ski jumping venues.

According to the International Olympic Committee's site:

Ski jumping has been part of the Olympic Winter Games since the first Games in Chamonix Mont-Blanc in 1924. The Large Hill competition was included on the Olympic programme for the 1964 Olympic Games in Innsbruck.

Read more about this topic:  Ski Jumping

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    I am not a literary man.... I am a man of science, and I am interested in that branch of Anthropology which deals with the history of human speech.
    —J.A.H. (James Augustus Henry)

    The History of the world is not the theatre of happiness. Periods of happiness are blank pages in it, for they are periods of harmony—periods when the antithesis is in abeyance.
    Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)

    In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)