2010 Winter Olympics: Ski Jumping
Saturday, February 13th, 2010
One of the first tickets we got for the Olympics was to Ski Jumping yesterday, and it was great!
They were supposed to start at 10am, so to get there we had to catch the Olympic network of buses as there is no public parking at any of the events and you need a permit to drive from Vancouver to Whistler from 6am to 6pm. So to get there at 10am, the 6am bus was in order. 6am?! That meant getting up at 4am. 4AM?!! Ridiculous. The bus hub we were scheduled to head out from is on the North Shore at Lonsdale Quay, and our original intention was to catch the seabus across there. That was quashed a couple of days ago when we checked out the Seabus’ “fantastic extended Olympic hours” and they started at 6.15 am. We actually owe a debt of thanks to a friend of ours, Amy, who agreed to be woken at 4.30am to drive us to the bus station – legend! She even got her first lesson of driving a manual vehicle on the “wrong” side of the road, and had to navigate back by herself in the dark… good work!
Anyhoo, we got there with plenty of time to spare, and the bus trip up was pretty uneventful and dark. Most people caught up on sleep…
Rocking up to the event, there was a bunch of security booths, so we cleared them pretty easily, then it was a 900m walk through the snow up to the course itself, with lots of helpful volunteers in blue jackets to help us on the way.
Rocking in was pretty cool – massive grand stand, and two very big ski jumping courses, a couple of tents for food and amenities, and not much else… just the side of a mountain!
Here’s the view from our seats after the crowds started gathering.We were watching guy on the smaller track.
It’s pretty amazing stuff to watch. Nat likened them to flying squirrels, which is pretty close. They shimmy out on a narrow bar at the top, which is set at a height up the hill by the judges depending on what safe area they think they’ll land on the slope at the bottom, then it’s a combination of distance and style points for their total score.
Then, when ready, they launch themselves off, their skis in two channels, then off the lip and into squirrel formation till they set up for the landing in a telemark formation… something about being a better landing or something…
Once the ski jumping was done, we were back on our bus and back down to Vancouver (about 1.5 hours) in time to prep up for watching the Opening Ceremony!
