Jumping Journal: September 07, 2008

The Dion family has been well known around Lebanon, New Hampshire for their skiing.  Ernie Dion was the first person, born in America to win the U.S. National Ski Jumping Championships.  Prior to that it had been foreigners that had moved to the states from overseas.  Ernie is in the National Ski Hall of Fame.  He had a son and grandson both named Bernie, they both ski jumped.  In fact to this day Bernie, and Bernie Jr both share the record for the the longest jump on the K25 in Lebanon at 25.5 meters.  Not much is heard these days out of the Dion family.  I did see one of the Dion boys out showing his wife the K50 this past winter during Christmas week.  Rumor has it one of the next generation of Dion's was jumping this year at Mud Meet.  I'm not sure what his last name is but I do know both of the Bernie's were at the meet, unfortunately I missed both of them since I didn't know what they look like.

 

Today keeping up with the Dion tradition was the annual summer ski jumping tournament in Lebanon, appropriately named the Dion Cup.  Since Lebanon is the only place in New England that summer jumping capability it has also been known as the New England Summer Ski Jumping Championships.

 

Earlier this week it was looking like we may very well end up seeing it rain for the first time in 8 years if not all 11 years the event has been held.  The remanants of Hurricane Hanna was suppose to be coming through and it looked like it was going to be wet.

 

We lucked out.  It rained almost 12 hours straight yesterday, from around 4PM until 3-4AM this morning.  By the time I left for Lebanon the sun was trying it best to break through the clouds but the clouds were still hanging tough.  By the time the competition began at noon time it was starting to clear out nicely and by the time the event was over it was almost wall to wall sunshine.  You couldn't have asked for nicer weather no matter how much you wanted to.

 

I got to the hill just shortly after 10AM and found a bit of a crowd had arrived for the meet already and more came in behind me.  In all their were 11 jumpers, 4 masters, one senior that jumped the master category, four juniors jumping on the K25 and two juniors that jumped on the K10.  It was the biggest crowd I think I have seen in the past eight years at Dion Cup.

 

After stretching everyone suited up and headed up the hill for some practice.  I was the first one off the jump.  It seems like it is that way more and more often anymore.  I didn't put any soap on my skis and had a decent first jump down roughly 15-16 meter range.  I knew once the other jumpers started putting soap on, things would pick up whether I put soap on my skis or not.

 

The second and third jumps were both down around 18 meters, thanks to the soap on the track.  The fourth jump of the day would be the one everybody would comment about the rest of the day.  The jump was sweet.  It was probably the longest jump I had all day long but I got caught a little off guard by just how high I was in the air and after landing I ended up losing it and went down tumbling and doing 'somersaults' through the sawdust.  Fortunately, surprisingly, I didn't pull all that much plastic off the landing hill like I normally do when I crash.  The quality of the jump above the landing versus the crash on the landing made me a little mad to say the least.  Talk about being robbed.  Granted it wasn't the competition yet but it would have been nice to have pulled that jump off without crashing, no matter when I took the jump.

 

I was slightly a bit more hestitant on the fifth and sixth jumps but I was still managing to land in about the same spot as before the fourth jump.

 

After a bit of a break for registration the meet got underway.  The trial round went pretty good for everyone.  I managed an 18 meter jump for the trial round.  I wasn't sure if I would be able to pull off much more than that during the competition or not.  The longest jump of the trial round went to Parker Haynes at 21.5 meters.  He managed to pull a 25 meter jump at Mud Meet this year while Bernie Dion Sr & Jr were there.

 

The first competitive round had me in a two way tie with Bill Ryan for third place, by distance.  Both Parker Haynes and Mark Breen out jumped Bill and I.  The problem that would really show up later on was that fact that Parker ended up crashing his first round jump and he lost big time style points as a result.

 

The second competitive round had me by myself with the third longest jump of the round at 18 meters.  Even though Parker had the longest jump during the two competition rounds he still wasn't able to pull far enough forward to catch me.

 

When the final results came in I ended up in second place in the jumping by two points.  Gee, I don't think I have ever finished that high before in a ski jumping competition.

 

The new facet of the Dion Cup has been expanding it out to include a 'nordic combined' event.  In this case it's simple a 1.4 mile run/sprint.  With a six second penalty for each point you were behind the leader it would make my 30 second penalty a bit of a challenge to say the least.  Given Mark Breen works for the New York State Police he is in good shape and he would prove it during the run portion of the competition.

 

Right before the turn around on the out and back course it looked like I was catching him.  I knew something seemed a little wrong.  I figured their was no way I would ever catch him.  As I got about halfway back to the start/finish line I noticed that he had really pulled ahead.  I wasn't doing bad about keep everyone behind me, behind me.

 

I managed to cross the finish line in second place in the overall standings as well.  I did end up with the third fastest run time at 8:22.  Mark had 7:53 and one of the juniors had a run time of 8:20 but he wasn't able to catch me since I had an 18 second headstart on him to begin with.

 

Seeing how little I run, pretty much none at all, having a little over a 6 minute mile pace wasn't bad.  Granted I haven't had the need so much for catching my breath in years as I did after I crossed the finish line.

 

It was a nice day with a few nice surprises along the way.  Now the gears switch around and we are heading back to jumping on Sunday afternoons for the rest of the summer since the power hasn't been restored to the lights on the jump yet and the late summer evenings aren't so late anymore.  Granted due to other things I have going on I'm not sure how much jumping I will be seeing the rest of the summer but I still do plan on getting my one day each month in at least.  Gotta keep the streak alive.

 

Keep the ski tips up,

Crash