How do you say...not what I was expecting. By a long shot.
Between Mother Nature, not very much so, and my own stinking brain I managed to have one of the worst weekends ever of ski jumping. I should have seen it coming.
I left for the 3.5 hour drive down to Salisbury, Connecticut early Friday afternoon. The drive down wasn't bad. When I arrived everything seemed to be going pretty decent. I was surprised to see how far south I had to get before I started losing natural snow. I was only about 30 minutes north of Salisbury before I started to see anything but snow.
I guess the local prep schools hockey rinks helped out quite a bit for given ice chips from the zamboni machine. They had the inrun looking real good and the landing hill and outrun were very sufficiently covered. I must say I still am a bit surprised by how good the conditions were.
Practice was suppose to start at 4:30PM but it finally started shortly after 6PM. They had iced down the inrun and was waiting for it to setup before we started jumping.
Everyone got suited up and headed on up the jump. I was a little nervous before the first jump but by the time I was on the bar I was calmed down and ready for a nice evening of jumping.
The one thing to remember is this is an old fashioned jump and not a modern jump. The table on the inrun goes on forever. It isn't a short table like modern jumps have. You easily spend 2 seconds on the table versus the normal split second that you would spend on the table on a modern inrun. Some videos of the jump are on youtube, search for "ski jump salisbury". I posted one last year from the end of the outrun that gives the true feeling of how long you spend on the table. I don't remember if it was posted on video.google or youtube.
As I headed down the inrun on the first jump it seemed like I was very comfortable. I guess I was too comfortable as I ended up sitting back on my heels. I jumped at the takeoff and went pretty much nowhere. The jump wasn't much over 30 meters, if it even made it that far. I think my first jump last year was further. I rode the landing hill and came to stop. The first jump was smooth, other than it went nowhere.
After everyone had a practice jump they moved right into the competition. It was a target competition with the first round being a trial round.
On the trial round everything started falling apart, at least on the outrun. I headed down the inrun and it seemed almost like the first jump. I jumped. It did go beyond the 30 meter mark that time around, around 32-33 meters. I rode down the landing hill and when I got out of the transition I was sitting too far back. I ended up going down and dragging my hands and butt all the way until I came to a stop. Little did I know it but I better get used to the position real quick.
I made my way back up the jump and after the kids and Matt had all taken their trial round jump the main round got started. I knew I wouldn't survive the cut on the first round. I headed down the inrun and it was pretty much an identical jump to the one before it, including the hand dragging in the outrun.
I missed the cut and that ended the evening for me. It turned out, not surprisingly, that Andrew Bliss ended up winning the target competition. He nailed the target on each of his three jumps. I believe the final of his three jumps ended up being the longest jump of the weekend.
I stuck around for the laser light show afterwards that replaced the fireworks display from last year thanks to people that like to blame other people left and right for anything they can get away with.
Saturday morning arrived and with it th eclear skies from Friday evening had turned to cloudy skies. The weather forecast up here in New Hampshire was for 40 degrees and rain by afternoon. The cloudy skies made it look like rain would hit. The weird thing was the weather forecast for Salisbury on Saturday morning was for snow and 39 degrees, Saturday night, rain and 27 degrees. Something didn't seem quite right with the forecast.
I took the short drive to the hill from where I was spending the weekend and after some stretching I suited up with the kids and we headed up for practice.
As I was walking up the tressel the snow started falling. It was falling lightly at first but by the time I finally took my first jump it had picked up in intensity. The first jump seemed fine. I was working mostly on making sure to keep my butt up. I knew that was what was causing my problem yesterday. The response in the air made it seemed like I ended up dropping the butt once again. This time, just like yesterday I ended up losing it in the outrun. This time I also managed to just clip one of the hail bales on the side the outrun and in the process, at least I think that is what created the problem, I ended up breaking some of the lamination on one of the skis.
I didn't realize at the time that I had did any damage to the skis. I walked back up the stairs and headed on up the inrun. When I got to the 'pull over' spot about 3/4 of the way up the inrun I noticed the broken lamination. I waited around for Mark to come on up the tressel. I knew he has been around the sport enough to know whether the circumstance was going to be safe or not to jump. He said that it should be okay after doing a flex test on the ski.
I waited my turn and headed on up and went for my third and what would turn out to be last jump of both the day and the weekend. It seemed like the inrun position was better, the butt seemed higher and more in control. Granted it felt like it was on the inrun. At the takeoff and in the air it didn't feel like it should. I didn't do a very good job of cocking the ankles on the jump either. After losing it once again in the outrun I took off the skis and headed inside the registration office/changing room/etc.
I set in the room with the rest of the kids for quite a while. I was stumped. I hadn't noticed anything happen like what was happening. After a while Larry Stone, former coach at Lake Placid, came in and ask me if I knew where Cannonball was. I hadn't seen him since he stopped jumping earlier in practice. After about 10 minutes Cannonball comes walking in with the news that Larry had come to him asking him to come have a talk with me and see if he couldn't get me to skip jumping in the meet. They was all worried that with my inrun trouble that I was having that I may very well end up going down on the inrun. As bummed out as I was I said the heck with and told them to take my name off the entry list.
Sunday morning I woke up, after a very long night Saturday night, and I pretty much had already decided the chance of me competing today were slim to none. About 8:30AM I was looking out the window from the bed and I saw a flurry or fall. Within ten minutes it was putting it down worse than at any point yesterday. I kinda cheered it on to the say the least. I knew I definitely wasn't going to jump. I knew my inrun trouble had nothing to do with the snow conditions on the inrun or the inrun itself like everyone was thinking yesterday. I knew no matter what the same circumstances was going to be around again today and the chances of me having the problems today as Friday evening or Saturday morning was pretty much a given guarantee.
The snow did let up for a bit but started right back up once again. Finally around 11AM the sun did start to come out. The weather forecast was for snow flurries and getting colder. The cold air mass was also suppose to bring in gusty winds up to 40 mph by mid afternoon. Granted that forecast was from Friday and not this morning, by this morning the winds weren't suppose to pick up until tonight.
After visiting with the host family I spent the weekend with and one of his old former ski jumping buddies that had spent time at the same house when he use to jump as a kid, I headed back to the hill for the final competition of the weekend.
I arrived just a minute or two before they were introducing the jumpers. They were starting the meet a little early to try to beat the winds. With the snow that was falling yesterday they told the jumpers once the starter gives the signal, GO, don't wait for the coaches to give the signal. Yesterday the wind wasn't a factor, the snow was factor. They were trying to keep the jumpers moving down the inrun so the track wouldn't fill up with snow and cause stickiness on the inrun. Today wind was the factor and one of the high school jumpers end up tipping in after he didn't wait for the coaches signal and went on the starters signal instead. He got some bad wind and tipped in as a result. From what I heard he was holding up both thumbs as he was riding down the landing hill. The crash was spectacular to say the least, and to walk away totally unscathed was impressive.
It was the 20 to 30 jumps I was hoping to get off the K64 this weekend but under the circumstances I'm surprised I ended up getting the six jumps that I managed to steal.
Now it should be time to return to normal ski jumping once again.
Crash
