Ski jumping-a brave game without a world record

　　The platform skiing competition of Beijing Winter Olympics was held in the National Platform Skiing Center from February 5 to 14, and produced five gold medals, involving men’s individual platform, men’s individual platform, men’s team, women’s individual platform and newly added mixed groups. The National Ski-jumping Center is the first ski-jumping venue in China that meets international standards. Its architectural inspiration comes from the traditional auspicious ornament "Ruyi" in China, so it is also called "Snow Ruyi".

　　Platform skiing originated in Norway, and it is called "Brave Game", which is a kind of snow sports event with double boards as tools to compete for flying distance and action posture. Since the first Winter Olympics in 1924, ski jumping has been an official event. At the Innsbruck Winter Olympics in 1964, ski jumping was clearly divided into standard platform and big platform, but it was not until the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014 that female athletes were allowed to participate in the standard platform competition.

　　Unlike racing sports, which like "downwind", platform skiers prefer "headwind". In the case of headwind, the airflow will "lift" the athlete’s body, thus delaying the descent speed and increasing the flight distance. From the traditional jumping with straight body or slightly bent legs at first, to the modern jumping with the trunk leaning forward and arms extending forward, and now to the V-shaped gliding with the body as parallel as possible to the snowboard and the arms attached to the side, coupled with the improvement of equipment performance supported by new technology, platform skiers can constantly challenge the limit and surpass themselves.

　　It should be pointed out that due to the differences in natural conditions such as temperature, wind speed, wind direction and visibility, as well as the differences in different ramp angles and the elevation angle of the take-off end, the ski jumping events can only judge the best results according to the athletes’ competitive conditions under the specific weather and venue conditions on the day of the competition, and cannot be compared horizontally with the results at other times or other venues, so there is no world record. Judging from the flying distance, the best result of ski jumping has exceeded 250 meters.

　　Ski jumping started late in China. In the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, the China sports delegation sent a team to participate in ski jumping for the first time. In PyeongChang Winter Olympics in 2018, Chang Xinyue became the first female platform skier from China to break into the Winter Olympics. In this Winter Olympics, China successfully achieved the simultaneous participation of men’s and women’s events. Although there is still a gap in absolute strength compared with the high-level athletes of this project, as the inspirational film Eddie the Eagle said: "The important thing in the Olympic Games is not only victory, but also participation; The meaning of life lies not in triumph, but in struggle. " Maybe it’s hard for China platform skiers to win medals in this Winter Olympics, but the brave jump on "Good Snow" is bound to be a memorable moment in the history of China’s snow project in the Winter Olympics.

　　(This article Source: The author of Economic Daily is Bai Yufei, a professor at Beijing Sport University)