Ski jumping has been a competition since the first Winter Olympics in 1924 and is known as the "Brave's Game" for its thrills. At the Beijing Winter Olympics, ski jumping will produce 5 gold medals, and players from all over the world will show their style at the "Snow Ruyi".
Competition: Watch the Snow Ruyi Flying Man Battle
Olympic Winter Games
The Beijing Winter Olympics ski jumping event has set up a total of 5 sub-events: men's individual standard platform, men's individual big jumping platform, men's team, women's individual standard platform, and mixed team, of which the mixed team is a new event of the Beijing Winter Olympics. There are a total of 105 seats in these 5 sub-events, of which 65 are men and 40 are women, and each team can send up to 5 male athletes and 4 female athletes. According to the current schedule announced on the official website of the Beijing Winter Olympics, the ski jumping competition will begin on February 5, and the gold medal of the women's individual standard platform will be decided on the same day. The final event was the men's team event on February 14.
Pyeongchang Winter Olympic Ski Jumping Competition. Photo/ Lu Lin
Ski jumping is a scoring event, and the score of each jump is composed of distance score, flight posture score, departure goal score and wind compensation score, of which distance score and flight posture score account for the highest proportion. Individual contestants will make two rounds of jumping in the final, and the scores of the two rounds are added up to the final score of the contestants, and the ranking will be determined accordingly. In the team event, each team needs to send 4 players to participate in the competition, and the total score of the 4 players in the two rounds of jumping is used to determine the ranking.
Ski jumping has a certain degree of danger. The gap between the big jump and the standard platform of the National Ski Jumping Center in Zhangjiakou is about 136 meters and 115 meters respectively, and the players need to jump from above, which not only tests the degree of technical grasp such as sliding speed, starting timing, and starting direction, but also tests the psychological quality.
In addition, this project has stricter requirements for equipment, and there are relevant regulations on the degree of body wrapping of ski clothes used by the players, the total weight of the equipment, etc., if the athletes are judged to be in violation of the equipment during the inspection, the results of the competition may be cancelled. Even famous players with rich experience will not be able to receive the podium due to equipment problems, so players must always pay attention to their equipment status.
Development pattern: Northern Europe leads Japan to compete
Ski jumping originated in Norway and is widely used in Northern and Central Europe. Norway has won the largest number of gold medals in the history of the Winter Olympics, winning a total of 11 gold medals, and won the event in six consecutive Winter Olympics that began in 1924. Since then, Finland, Austria, Germany and other countries and regions have also emerged many outstanding ski jumpers. The best player in the asian region is Japan, which has won three Winter Olympic gold medals, and Japan is the only Asian country to have won a gold medal in the event.
The Sochi Winter Olympics ski jumping men's team competition, the German team won the championship. Photo/Wei Zheng
In recent Winter Olympics, the performance of Polish athletes has been very impressive, with Polish star Kamil Stoch alone winning two gold medals in the men's individual event at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi and defending his title in the men's individual big jump event at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, while also leading the team to win the bronze medal in the men's team event. But when it came to the Beijing Winter Olympics cycle, the veteran's competitive status declined slightly. The other world's top players are equal in strength and win-lose, and the first five finals of the 2021-2022 World Cup have produced five champions from different countries and regions. At present, Japan's Kobayashi Lingyou, Germany's Carl Geiger, Norway's Granerrud, etc. have the opportunity to stand on the podium of the Beijing Winter Olympics.
The Women's Individual Standard Has been an official event since the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, and the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics champion is Norway's Lundebe, but she has withdrawn from this season due to personal health reasons. The most vocal player at the moment is Austrian youngster Marita Cramer. In addition, Germany's Orsos, Japan's Takanashi Saro, and Slovenia's Kryzhnal also have the strength to attack the championship.
In the men's team competition and the mixed team competition, Germany, Austria, Norway, Japan and other teams have relatively strong talent reserves, but the overall strength is very close. Competition for medals in team events at the Winter Olympics will be fierce.
China's current situation: although the start is late, it is aimed at flying high
Ski jumping was launched late in China, and there were not many participants in the past. Before 2016, Chinese athletes participating in international ski jumping events needed to temporarily form a training team, and it was not until 2017 that the national team was officially established. China has two experiences in participating in Olympic events, one was the 2006 Turin Winter Olympics, the best result was Li Yang in the K90 class event won the 44th place; the other is the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, China's Chang Xinyue won the 20th place in the women's individual standard platform competition.
Chang Xinyue at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. Photo/ Lu Lin
Despite a late start, China's ski jumping cycle has progressed rapidly at the Beijing Winter Olympics. Since 2018, the ski jumping training team has added a lot of fresh blood through cross-border cross-sports selection, most of these athletes come from athletics, taekwondo, martial arts and other sports.
In addition to "recruiting talents", the training conditions of the team have also been improved, and the ski jumping training team is mainly preparing for the ski jumping training and scientific research base in Laiyuan, Hebei Province. It is one of the national ice and snow sports training bases for the Beijing Winter Olympics, with the conditions for simulating the World Championships and preparing for the Olympic Games, and also building a wind tunnel laboratory with complete training functions. The team members can be unaffected by the weather, and the technical movements are honed through the wind tunnel, which greatly improves the training efficiency. At the same time, the team is also equipped with foreign teachers, psychological experts and other support personnel, always pay attention to the status of athletes.
After about three years of training, many athletes in the team have the strength to step onto the international stage. In June last year, the team went abroad for a long foreign race journey of about half a year, and made a series of targeted adjustments according to the problems of weak pressure resistance and on-the-spot mentality exposed in actual combat. Such as setting up a simulation match in the team, setting up a virtual opponent game, etc. According to Xu Gaohang, director of the training department of the Winter Games Center and leader of the ski jumping team, the experience of the past six months has made the athletes more mature and the progress is very obvious.
Up to now, a total of 17 athletes in China have met the minimum participation standards of the Beijing Winter Olympics, locking in the qualifications of one man and one woman and two hosts. And according to the latest Beijing Winter Olympics qualification points ranking released by the International Snow Federation, women's players Dong Bing and Peng Qingyue were successfully shortlisted. Song Qiwu, a young player with outstanding achievements among the men's players, has also been trained in the World Cup.
At present, the ski jumping training team has returned to China for the final sprint preparation, although the overall level of competition is still a certain gap from the world's top athletes, but the Chinese athletes will do their best to show the training results at the Beijing Winter Olympics and strive to play the best level.