Back in my teen years, when I was playing hockey, I spent a couple weeks in Lake Placid at hockey camp.. one of our recreation days, we went to some of the sites from the Olympics and got to go up to the observation area on one of the ski jumps.. I swear, that landing hill is even steeper than the jump itself... Brave and crazy fuckers, but Damn, I love to watch them.

Eddie Edwards' best ever jump was 68 meters

Hilarious. Thanks for posting.

A body sliding with no friction moves faster, dropping from the same height, than a rolling body, because for the rolling body much of the original energy goes to rotational kinetic energy. Eddie would face stiffer competition from a sliding block of ice.

Still amusing though...

...I loved seeing Alex Bilodeau's run. It was SO cool!

And the human interest side of his life with his brother, makes him one of my favorite Olympians.

I've become bored with ski jumping. It is the same old same old every jump. There use to be daring to come down the jump. Now you place your skis in a track and eliminate any excitement in the front end of the sport leaving almost everyone making a smooth transition to the snow at the end of the jump. Everyone jumps and everyone lands makes for a dull competition.

and using your head as a 'rudder' at high speed - WTF!

Top three went to Japanese jumpers...I loved watching that...just amazing...if I weren't boycotting these Sookie Olympics, I might watch them again.

I don't know what type of mental training you have to do to overcome what must be an incredible survival instinct when you are essentially (to your brain) jumping forward to your death off the end of the ramp.

. . .how do you know if you're good at it? If you try and hurt yourself you're not? If you don't get hurt, you're good at it?

It's the doing it the first time that baffles me.
GAC