Hurtling through the air at 90km/h, tens of metres above the ground, landing around 100m away from where they started, and looking absolutely motionless in the process. That about sums up the sport of Ski Jumping.
source: Winona Post
In this beautiful sport, athletes ski down a ramp, jumping off to try and cover the maximum distance before landing, trying to maintain the perfect posture and stick the perfect landing. Rankings in each event are determined by a combination of a distance score and a flying score. In order to calculate the distance score, there is a K-line placed a fixed distance from the ramp and skiers gain points for every metre they travel past the line and lose points for every metre they fall short. There are 5 judges, each of whom give the skier a flying score by deducting points from 20. They judge the athletes based on flying, landing, and style. The highest and lowest of the judges’ scores are discarded and the remaining three scores are all added to the distance score. There are 4 events. The Mens’ Large Hill and Normal Hill are only different in the length of the ramp, the distance to the K-line and the points awarded per metre (1.8 in Large and 2 in Normal). Ski Jumping was only introduced as a women’s sport in Sochi 2014 and they only compete in one Normal Hill event. There is also a Team Event for men wherein four jumpers make up a team and all their scores are tallied to decide the rankings. The Large Hill is used in the Team Event.