Kyle Kessler "King" at Norge
Kevin Bickner 2nd, Nick Schott 3rd in annual long-jump competition
The Norge Ski Club of Fox River Grove IL held their annual "King of the Hill" competition on the 70M hill Saturday evening June 13. After several rounds of elimination jumping, two veteran midwest jumpers and one youngster made the finals. Kyle Kessler of Minneapolis won the event; his longest flight was 74.5 meters in the fourth round. Norge youngster Kevin Bickner flew 74.0 meters in the third round, and Madison's Nick Schott flew 69.5 in both the third and fourth rounds. Congratulations to all who competed ... details and photos at www.norgeskiclub.com. Complete results available on our Schedule & Results page, link at left.

Women Await Decision in Canada
Friday April 24 was last day of a week-long hearing in BC Supreme Court
Five days of hearings wrapped up on April 24 before BC Supreme Court Justice Lauri Ann Fenlon. Fifteen female ski jumpers sued the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC), which accepted massive government funding to put on the 2010 Games. The claim by the women's legal counsel was based on the anti-discrimination provisions of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The ruling by BC Supreme Court Justice Lauri Ann Fenlon is expected within several weeks. Be sure to follow press releases and links to articles via the NEWS page on the Women's Ski Jumping USA site via the link at right.  There's also a video trailer on their homepage!.

Two NEW Films to Focus on Ski Jumping
Pair of projects now underway will bring ski jumping to wider audience

FIGHTING GRAVITY ... backed by actress Virginia Madsen ... article   trailer
Variety Magazine reported on April 8 that the documentary "Fighting Gravity" has gained the backing of Title IX productions. It focuses on the women's struggle for inclusion in the Olympics ... the outcome of the upcoming court proceeding will be incorporated in the film.

FREQUENT FLYERS ... by Media Ventures ... visit website, view trailer
Ski jumping has been struggling against long odds for many years in North America, while it's an enormous prime-time TV attraction, with megabucks sponsorship and rock-star status for athletes in Europe, Scandinavia, and Japan. In the US, there is no funding mechanism other than the bank of mom & dad, and and various local fund-raisers. What small support the US Ski Team has given for a handful of athletes in international competition (nothing for development for many, many years) has been stripped. There is NO funding from USSA or the US Ski Team. The men's and women's development teams are both INDEPENDENT of USSA/USST.

While this new film is not yet finished, it shows promise of giving an audience some appreciation for what it takes to learn, improve, and finally excel in this demanding but very rewarding individual sport. At the top of this article you'll find a link to a website about this project, and it gives a very realistic assessment of the state of the sport in the US, including both the men's and women's development teams (with links to both). This is one sport where both men and women can participate ... except, as we all know, at the Olympics. We're hoping that will soon change, because flight is neither enhanced or hampered by gender.

Van Sends Letter and Fact Sheet to Rogge
Final attempt to get IOC to relent prior to April 20 BC Supreme Court date
American Lindsey Van and Canadian Katie Willis went to Sportaccord in Denver, where they held a March 25 press conference to announce their request for a private meeting with IOC head Dr. Jacques Rogge ... read 3/25 article.

The IOC apparently "got confused" about who to contact during that week, despite very clear instructions, and ... surprise! ... the meeting wasn't held ... read 3/26 press release.

Making a final attempt to get the IOC president to change his mind prior to a scheduled hearing in front of the British Columbia Supreme Court on April 20, Lindsey Van prepared a thorough and courteous letter to Dr Rogge, which was sent via FedEx along with a fact sheet, requesting once more a meeting at his convenience any time, anywhere, prior to the court date. It's perhaps the last chance to resolve the issue in the women's favor without going through the legal process, which is being handled pro-bono by a prestigious Vancouver law firm ... read 3/30 press release ... includes letter and fact sheet.

US Men's "Project X" Season Wrap-Up
Progress made by young team after season of international competition
We've received the year end report from the US men's team, which is independent of the US Ski Team. While there's still a long way to go to be fully competitive against well-funded teams from countries with huge development programs, there were a number of encouraging performances, and there are reasons for optimism looking ahead to next year ... read report.

US Gains Three World Champions in 2009!
Lindsey Van (Gold),  Todd Lodwick (2 Gold),  Billy Demong (Gold, Bronze)
It was a most amazing week for the US Ski Team at the FIS Nordic World Championships in Liberec CZE. Until this week, the total US take in Nordic skiing had been a bronze for Anders Haugen in ski jumping at the 1924 Olympics (which nobody realized he'd won until a scoring error was discovered in the 1990s), a bronze by Bill Koch in XC at the 1976 Olympics and another at the 1982 Worlds, a gold by Johnny Spillane in NC at the 2003 Worlds, and a silver by Bill Demong in NC at the 2007 Worlds. Those five medals had had been the total US winnings in Olympic or World Championship competition over the last 85 years. Over an eight day span in February 2009, the US Ski Team brought home five more ... four golds and a bronze!

The first gold went to Lindsey Van, who became the first-ever World Champion in women's ski jumping. Then Todd Lodwick picked up a gold in the mass-start Nordic Combined event. He followed with another gold in the next event, and shared the podium with teammate Demong, who took the bronze. Finally, Demong won the final NC event of the championships to take home the fourth gold! Congratulations to all the US athletes who participated!

Lindsey Van - World Champion!
Jessica Jerome 6th ... Graessler 2nd, Sagen 3rd, Iraschko 4th
  *  Women's Ski Jumping Results:   Friday Feb 20
CLICK PHOTO TO VIEW GALLERY ON THE US SKI TEAM WEBSITE!
(Getty Images photo / USST)     US Ski Team article   ESPN   The Ski Channel
The US Ski Team's Lindsey Van, ranked in the top three in the world (Ladies' Continental Cup series) for each of the past five seasons, stood fourth after the first round of ski jumping in the first-ever women's event at the FIS World Championships. In the final round she launched a mighty flight to 97.5 meters, and made history as the very first Women's World Champion ... and the first American to win a gold medal in the sport of ski jumping at either a World Championship or Olympics!   US teammate Jessica Jerome placed 6th, with Alissa Johnson 20th, and 14 year old Sarah Hendrickson 29th.   We want to also recognize their coaches, Kjell Ivar Magnussen and Larry Stone.  

Two veterans, Germany's Ulrike Graessler and Norway's perennial Ladies' Continental Continental Cup champion Anette Sagen were 1-2 after the first round, with France's surprising thirteen year old Coline Mattel 3rd. Van leaped past all three to take the title, ahead of Graessler, Sagen, and another veteran, Austria's Daniela Iraschko. Arguably the four best female jumpers over the last five years, they topped the field, with the youngster, Mattel, finishing 5th. Thirty-six women from 13 countries competed. This is the same size hill the IOC refuses to let 'em jump on in Vancouver ... where Van holds the record of 105.5 meters!   Please read and sign the petition to include them in the 2010 Games!

Todd Lodwick - World Champion!
US veteran wins MS 10/100, Demong 5th, Spillane 24th, Camerota 25th
  *  Nordic Combined MS 10K/HS100 Results:   Friday Feb 20   USST article
The first Nordic Combined event of the FIS World Championships was the mass-start 10K race followed by jumping on the K90/HS100 jump. Todd Lodwick of the USA was in the lead after winning the 10K race by almost 5 seconds over Germany's Tino Edelmann ... with US skier Bill Demong six-tenths back in third. After the first round of jumping, Lodwick remained in the lead, with Demong 4th. When it was all over, Lodwick's final jump of 97.5 meters gave him the overall win and the World Championship in this event!   We wish to also recognize NC coach Dave Jarrett.

Lodwick, age 32, is a four-time Olympian who came back from two years in retirement to reach for the gold ... although he'd been highly ranked in the World Cup throughout his career, with six wins, he'd never won a medal at Worlds or the Olympics ... until today! Demong, a silver medalist in 2007, hung on for 5th; Johnny Spillane, who'd become the first American ever to win Nordic gold medal (gold in 2003), finished 24th, with teammate Eric Camerota 25th. More info will be available on the US Ski Team site, link at left, as well as the US Nordic Combined site, www.USNOCO.org.

Lodwick Gold #2, Demong Bronze!
Americans share Nordic Combined podium in Individual Normal Hill/10K
  *  Individual NH/10K Results:   Sunday Feb 22      USST article   USST blog
On Sunday, Feb 22, at the FIS World Nordic Ski Championships in Liberec CZE, Todd Lodwick grabbed his second gold medal in two days, and teammate Billy Demong joined him on the podium with the bronze medal. The event was the Individual Normal Hill/10K event, run in the traditional "Gundersen" format, where one round of jumping is used to determine start intervals for a 10K cross-country race. As he did in Friday's mass-start event, Lodwick won the jumping round. He earned a 2/10 second advantage at the start, and had a tight battle for about half the race before pulling away from Norway's Jan Schmid. Meanwhile, Demong had started 12th, and raced to third behind Schmid and Lodwick.

With the pair of golds by Lodwick, a gold by Lindsey Van in women's ski jumping, and the bronze by Demong, the US leads in medals with 8 of 20 events completed!

Billy Demong - World Champion!
Win caps stunning week for US Ski Team ... 4 golds, 1 bronze
  *  Individual NH/10K Results:   Saturday Feb 28      USST article
In the final event for US athletes at the FIS Nordic Winter Games in Liberec CZE, Billy Demong finished almost 13 seconds ahead of Germany's Bjorn Kircheisen to put an exclamation point on the greatest week in the history of US Nordic skiing! He was 8th after the jumping round on the big hill, and stormed through the field to seal the victory. Todd Lodwick finished 10th, Johnny Spillane 19th, and Eric Camerota was 35th. Demong had been disqualified on a violation during the team event on Thursday, which kept the team out of contention. The team reported yesterday that they would simply keep focused on today ... and Demong turned that lemon into lemonade!  Congratulations to the US Ski Team! Lindsey Van won the first-ever women's world championship in ski jumping, and Todd Lodwick won the other two individual NC events, with Demong also earning a bronze. More on USST site via link above!

US Ski Jumping Needs Your Help!     (return to top)
Video from 2008 US Nationals ... action and interviews with US men & women
Here's a quick rundown on how ski jumping is supported in the USA ... this is a shameless pitch for financial support from individual donors and/or potential sponsors, and there are links at the bottom of this article to help you reach a pair of websites where you can make donations to support the development of our dedicated and motivated young athletes, both men and women.

Let's start with some background. There are three separate organizations involved in funding ski jumping in America; the US Ski Team, Women's Ski Jumping USA, and the men's development program, known as Project X. This isn't ideal, but it is what it is.

The US Ski Team has for years supported only a handful of top athletes, primarily in fielding an Olympic team, and a bare-bones presence in World Cup, which in recent years consisted of only Alan Alborn on a regular basis, and Clint Jones in selected events. After the 2006 Olympics, Al and Clint retired. In 2007, the USST named six women to the ski jumping team; this remains the situation; there is no US Ski Team funding for development programs, and there hasn't been for years. We do not suggest donating through USSA or the US Ski Team, because they WILL NOT PERMIT YOU to designate your contribution specifically for ski jumping!

Over the past ten years or so, a well-organized group based in Park City and known as Women's Ski Jumping USA  (WSJUSA)  has raised their own funds for the coaching and travel of a growing number of young female athletes. When FIS created the international Ladies' Continental Cup (LCOC) series in 2005, the US women quickly established themselves among the best in the world. In 2007, the US Ski Team named the top six women as the US Ski Jumping Team; their coach is Kjell Ivar Magnussen, formerly coach of the Norwegian women's team. The development program for young athletes is NOT affiliated with, nor funded by, the US Ski Team. The WSJUSA foundation remains as the funding and organizational entity for female ski jumpers in the USA. Because VISA is still a primary sponsor, the development team is known as the VISA Women's Ski Jumping Team (VWSJT). Its director is former US star and pioneer female jumper Karla Keck. The president of WSJUSA is Deedee Corradini, former mayor of Salt Lake City, who was involved in the planning for the 2002 Olympics. The VISA sponsorship does NOT cover all expenses, therefore WSJUSA & VWSJT continue to seek individual donors and corporate sponsors.

A new men's development team, named Project X, was organized for the 2008 season, also independent of, and not funded by, the US Ski Team, although we were told they received some start-up money from USST. In their first year, the group raised sufficient funds to hire Jochen Danneberg, a 1976 Olympic silver medalist who formerly coached the German, Swiss, and Korean men's teams. A group of athletes was selected, and they are competing regularly in the men's Continental Cup series as well as some FIS Cup events, and posting some encouraging results. Jochen has returned for the 2009 season, and the group has an ambitious season-long competition schedule. Among the people involved in this effort are Alan Johnson and Mike Holland. Alan is a former US jumping coach, and the father of one of our top male jumpers, 2006 Olympian Anders Johnson, and also one of our best female jumpers, Alissa Johnson, who got her first LCOC win this summer. Mike is a former US Olympian and the only American to ever hold the world distance record. This independent group also seeks individual donors and corporate sponsors.

Please consider financially supporting US ski jumping. We wish that the USSA and US Ski Team would choose to fund a development program, but they don't, they haven't, and they're not likely to. We would like to think the day will come when our men's and women's development programs will share a single funding source, but that's not the case today. You may choose to support our men ... or our women ... or you could split your support between them.  Your contribution to either development team (or both) is, of course, TAX DEDUCTIBLE!  Here are the links to donation info on both groups' websites.

• Donate to WSJUSA    (women's development program)
• Donate to Project X   (men's development program)

Year-End Homepage Access ... All Years
See stories & coverage from the end of 2008 and earlier seasons
Each spring, we archive our homepage with end-of-year stories. You can view these pages via the links below.

• 2009 - Van, Lodwick, Demong Strike Gold at Worlds
• 2008 - IOC's Exclusion of Women Dominates 2008 News
• 2007 - Malysz #1 in WC, Van & Demong US Champions
• 2006 - US Women #1 Team, Janda Wins World Cup
• 2005 - Romoeren Flies 239M at Planica
• 2004 - Ahonen World Champ, Women Fly in Norway
• 2003 - Hautamaeki 231M, Spillane Wins First US Gold
• 2002 - Kids Learning to Jump, Alborn Flies 221.5M

Our Visitor Traffic Continues To Grow
Olympics, Women's Continental Cup drew 100K+ visitors
During the winter 2005-2006 season, we set all-time visitor records. We had 22K+ visitors in January, 42K+ visitors for February, and 20K+ in March. We drew just about 100K for the winter 2006 competition season from December through March, at about 5 minutes per visit. We averaged well over 300 per day throughout the summer, up significantly over last year, with much of the increase driven by the Olympics.

With the beginning of the 2006-07 season, our traffic increased as expected in December 2006 to 450 visitors per day, and in January 2007 it rose to 600 per day. We averaged 555 per day in February, just under 500 per day in March, 350 per day in April, just over 300 per day during the summer months. Traffic climbed steadily in the fall. We averaged about 600 per day from Christmas 2007 through mid-February 2008. Through the spring and summer we drew about 250 visitors per day. We've hosted well over three quarters of a million visitors since going online in 2001.

Average time per visit through the years has consistently been about five minutes, but a trend toward longer visit times had become apparent by fall 2008. Through the 2009 season, we drew about 500 visitors per day, and they were remaining on the site over eleven minutes per visit (average). While we're encouraged by these trends in our visitor statistics, there are signs of a resurgence of interest in the SPORT of ski jumping with an American audience. We attibuted the start of this trend to the attention paid by media to the women's issue. It also helped that the success of our NC athletes brought additional media to NC and jumping early in the season, and the huge haul of gold medals by our athletes at the World Championships put our sport in the spotlight later in the season. Thank you for your interest in our sport!

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(formerly WCSN)

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Would you buy a car from this man?

NBC Sports
SKI JUMPING
*  Van interview
NORDIC COMBINED
*  Demong interview

Boston Globe Pix!
Celebrating 30 years of World Cup Ski Jumping
30 photos - click here

Flashback!
Remember our "Behind the News" page? It ran during our 2002 and 2003 seasons. We've updated it a bit, but left it in the original layout. Click here to read a bit about big ski jumps, female jumpers, questions jumpers get asked, a cool mobile wind tunnel, and famous folks who were once ski jumpers!

Beginner Video
How do kids begin to learn the sport of ski jumping? Here's a one-minute video of youngsters learning on the little 10 meter jump at the St Paul Ski Club!