 Poster: A snowHead
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... err ... I'm not sure!
Could it be the 'Hundschopf' - the Dog's Head - on the long and demanding Lauberhorn course, which will be raced at Wengen next weekend 13-14 January?
Sean Newsom takes a leisurely run down the Lauberhorn for today's Sunday Times - click here - and highlights the drop-off involved:
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| “When the downhillers hit the Hundschopf they’re not skiing. They’re flying. [says Sammy Salm, Newsom's guide for the day] They take off up there,” he says, pointing to the top of the slope, above us on our left. “And then,” he says, sweeping his arm in a 180-degree arc and pointing to a spot about 50ft beyond us on our right, “they land there. You can count the seconds they’re in the air. Jump-two-three-land. And they’ve covered 150ft.” |
Don't know if that's a definitive measurement of how far the racers fly off that jump, but is it the longest? Maybe Martin Bell will spot this and give us a rough ranking of the longest and most testing jumps on the World Cup circuit.
In the meantime, Britain's current leading downhiller Finlay Mickel has filed a diary of his state of play for The Scotsman: click here.
Last edited by Poster: A snowHead on Tue 10-01-06 8:46; edited 1 time in total
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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I think the biggest jump used to be on the Val Gordina course and were called the camel humps. There was i think three humps and some of the braver downhillers used to clear two of the humps in one jump.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Almost all the racers now jump the Camels at Val Gardena, although this year the course was set around the jumps to avoid them, because the new snow and headwind meant that they would not have had enough speed to clear them. That's certainly the highest air on any DH course - a "gap jump" that existed long before that term was invented. First man to jump them: Uli Spiess in 1980 - probably after his customary pre-race Jaegertee!
The Hundschopf is a steep drop but relatively low speed because of the S-bend above it. The Mausefalle at Kitz is probably one of the longest, with a good steep landing area all the way down. The Chamonix Les Houches course, although otherwise technically relatively undemanding, has a couple of huge jumps.
However, it is not pure size that makes a jump difficult, but whether there is a turn immediately before or after it. If you get the turn wrong beforehand, then the jump can take you off the course and into the net, as with Reinstadler when he died on the Wengen finish jump in 1991.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Martin Bell, I don't think anyone is going to challenge that opinion! We are humbled 
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