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Buckle up fuckos, it's time to watch people throwing themselves down mountains for entertainment. The 2020 Ski Flying World Championships is this coming weekend, held in Planica, Slovenia. "uh Ski Flying OP, what's that poo poo?" Well, it's like Ski Jumping, but bigger. They jump a looooong way. The world record is 253.5 metres achieved by Stefan Kraft of Austria back in 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96BkG0TYKrY The record for the Planica hill on show this weekend is 252.0 metres by Ryoyu Kobayashi of Japan in 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB-Y-MTXdNE Getting fired off the end of a slope at around 70 mph and landing it safely "down there" - relying on a combination of technique and air pressure, sometimes it goes wrong. You'll have to click through for this video and it's pretty brutal in places (no-one dies). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jr9X6y41Czo Sadly it seems there'll be no crowd in attendance, the Ski Flying World Championships brings out the best in everyone - Absolute Scenes here in the crowd and on the ski lift at Harrachov back in 1996. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpXpX0UTNXw Schedule here https://www.planica2020.si/en/programme, all times CET. In Europe, coverage will be on Eurosport starting with the qualification round on Thursday. Elsewhere? I dunno, VPN and Eurosport Player? If you are USA USA USA inclined, there will be a couple of Americans jumping. They won't win and are probably statistically more likely to injure themselves horribly. There's also Canadians and one is quite good, but still won't win. Finally, here's the world record distance from the Planica hill for someone with a couple of GoPros strapped to their head. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-QEjwieXIU
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Dec 7, 2020 22:43
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| # ? May 3, 2024 07:35 |
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So what if you find yourself with nothing to do and end up watching a dodgy polish stream of this stuff, what is there to look out for? First is the Individual Ski Flying Championship which starts with qualifying on Thursday which whittles the field down to 50(?) and follows with two flights for each qualifier on Friday, and another two on Saturday. Add up all the points from the 4 jumps and whoever has the most wins - simple. Points are awarded for style and there's wind and gate compensation, but ultimately in Ski Flying distance is king and what gives you the points and the win. If you land and touch the ground with any part of your body, it doesn't count as a legal jump and you lose a chunk of points. The longest flight on record is actually 254m by a Russian guy (Dmitri Vassiliev) but he landed on his butt and then his head so it doesn't count. Sorry Dmitri. Explanation of the scoring system here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ski_jumping#Scoring_system Any one of a number of guys could win, equally a duff flight in the qualification round and a favourite or two could find themselves with nothing to do on Friday and Saturday, but here's some guys to look out for. Poland - Dawid Kubacki, Kamil Stoch, Piotr Zyla Germany - Marcus Eisenbichler, Karl Geiger Norway - Robert Johannson, Marius Lindvik, Halvor Egnar Granerud, Johann Andre Forfang Japan - Ryoyu Kobayashi, Yukiya Sato Austria - (have all been isolating due to 'Rona, but if they are there) Stefan Kraft, Danny Huber Russia - Evgeniy Klimov Slovenia - Pretty much all of them, it's their hill. Domen Prevc has an interesting but pretty successful style. USA - Casey Larson. Good luck Canada - Mackenzie Boyd-Clowes Other countries who will have representation include Czech Rep, Switzerland and Finland who are all a bit on the poo poo side nowadays, Kazakhstan who really shouldn't be here because they are terrible and a light sprinkling of Estonians, Bulgarians, French and Italians. Sunday is the team event where it is most likely that malarkey can occur. Each country selects 4 jumpers, they all have a go and all the points are added up and then the top 8 teams all do it again, keeping their points from the first go and adding to them with their 2nd efforts. The thing with this is that some of the teams entering probably don't have 4 guys really good enough to tackle this sort of hill with any real confidence.....however a misplaced sense of national pride means they'll be having a go anyway. This championship only comes round every 2 years so there's plenty of time to heal up before 2022. The good teams are Norway, Slovenia, Austria, Germany, Japan & Poland. That's only 6. We will almost certainly see teams from Switzerland, Czech Rep and Russia too. I hope the Kazakhs fancy a bash and it's possible teams from Finland, Estonia and others rock up. There will be bad jumps with painfully low distances, there may well be crashes. Whatever happens, lets hope spotty Slovenian youth Timi Zajc puts in some cracking jumps so we can all have a nice song & dance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BWAxh9VRgc biglads fucked around with this message at 12:28 on Dec 8, 2020 |
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Dec 8, 2020 01:39
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I'm old so I still remember watching (on TV) a Ski Flying event from decades ago, probably late '80s, when the weather was bad and it was just a progression of one skier after another getting all out of shape in the air and then landing facefirst at 90 MPH and ragdolling down 100 additional yards of hill. If that event happened today they'd probably cancel or delay it until the crosswinds died down, but it was the 80s so they just kept shoving these guys down the ramp like they were throwing virgins into a volcano.
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Dec 8, 2020 05:14
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Number_6 posted:I'm old so I still remember watching (on TV) a Ski Flying event from decades ago, probably late '80s, when the weather was bad and it was just a progression of one skier after another getting all out of shape in the air and then landing facefirst at 90 MPH and ragdolling down 100 additional yards of hill. If that event happened today they'd probably cancel or delay it until the crosswinds died down, but it was the 80s so they just kept shoving these guys down the ramp like they were throwing virgins into a volcano. There haven't been any face-first Ski Flying accidents for a few years now, although there's always messy landings that can do an ankle or ACL etc. There's only so much safety you can do in a fundamentally unsafe sport like this though. I think there is or was a rule where under-18s weren't allowed to compete on the Ski Flying hills, after all nobody wants to see children getting killed. When Slovenian jumper Domen Prevc was 17 the Slovenians flat out ignored this and sent him down the Planica hill. He did pretty well to be fair and he's always worth watching as he travels face first through the air. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E074rqEHUdc biglads fucked around with this message at 11:09 on Dec 8, 2020 |
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Dec 8, 2020 10:59
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