After a day in bed I decided to get up however I felt. Being miserable on my own is still worse than being miserable in other people’s company, so I decided to head over to the ski jump competition to meet James and the rest of the team.
I’ve taken a 1000km detour to do this leg of the trip and seeing as I’m not actually going to get to jump myself anymore, I may as well go and see some people jump. The competition has different age ranges, and I was encouraged to also see that some of the “Masters” were more senior than others – there were a couple of chaps who looked well into their 70s. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen ski jumping live and it is an amazing spectacle. The thing you notice is the whistling noise as the jumpers come over the hill and then the “thwack” as their skis land hard on the snow. It’s incredibly gracefully and elegant seeing them glide down the hill, and fairly comedy when you see many of them try and come to a stop again doing a massive snow plough on two and a half metre long skis. One chap in particular looked excellent at the jumping side, but a little lacking in the requisite “stopping” skills. Every time he landed he ended up in a heap next to the spectators chuckling away to himself.
Ski Jumping is generally thought of as a fairly dangerous sport, but in fact has a very good safety record. However within 5 minutes of arriving a competitor on the small (40m) hill wiped out, and required an air ambulance to get him out. They took a good half an hour to move him, and as he was stretchered past it became apparent that he took most of the impact on his face – he was not in a good way.
After the restart I found James and he introduced me to the rest of the team – Jason, Alex and Alun. As he was wearing his organisers hat, and not jumping today, he took me up the hill to get a better view of the comp. As we walked up the hill one of the old fellas obviously didn’t spot another competitor coming down the ramp and took off down the hill from half way. The guy on the hill had nowhere to go as he was already in motion and took off the ramp, landing 20 feet from us on top of the older fella who was meandering his way down.
It looked like someone should have “bought the farm”, but there was an embarrassed silence as both competitors picked themselves up and walked down the hill. The impact was big enough to snap at least one of the ski jump skis, but both miraculously walked away unharmed.
“Are there a lot of accidents?” I asked. “This is unusual” said James.
10 minutes later we’re positioned at the take off point and James is marshalling the jumpers to ensure there’s only one on the slope at a time. Alun, one of the British team is lined up for his first jump. As he takes off, his balance looks all wrong, too far forward. He disappears over the crest of the landing hill and I hear some gasps from down below. It doesn’t look good – he went over the front of his skis and landed face first on the slope. Alun is moving, but not much. James heads down to help out, it’s announced that the helicopter is coming in for the second time today and the rest of the day’s jumping is cancelled.
I decide that James probably had enough on his mind without me hanging round asking stupid questions, so made my exit hopefully meeting up with them later today.
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