You will find it far easier to keep your balance on landing, if you remember not to jump to one side of your course ([Fig. 42], a), but to come to the ground with your feet as nearly as possible on your original line of progress—though, of course, pointing across it, instead of along it, and, according to the speed at which you were running, more or less ahead of the place where you took off ([Fig. 42], b).
The secret of using the jump round successfully lies, not in the actual making of the jump, but in knowing the safest and most effective way of applying it.
Suppose, for instance, you are running either across a slope or straight down it, at a very moderate speed, and wish to stop, you can easily do so by means of a jump round towards the hill, which will bring you almost or quite at right angles to your original course (Plates [XLVII.] and [XLVIII.]). As you land you will naturally have to lean inwards to compensate for the outward throw. The amount of inward lean necessary varies with the speed at which you are running before the jump. When the speed is at all high the inclination at which you would be safe from an outward fall is so great that on landing after the jump, if you were to make one, the skis would almost certainly skid, and you would fall inwards; while, if the skis did happen to hold, your legs would not have enough strength to withstand the shock, but would collapse under you.
When running at all fast, therefore, it is impossible to stop with one jump. You must first jump a little way round, so that you face less directly downhill, and check your pace; you can then jump again and stop yourself ([Fig. 42], c).
In the same way, if you wish to jump round instead of making a downhill turn, you must either make your tacks at a gradient which will keep down your speed sufficiently to allow you to make the complete turn in one jump, or you must check your pace before making the downhill jump by turning slightly uphill with a preliminary jump. This is exactly equivalent to checking the pace by making a slight uphill swing before making a downhill one.
The higher the speed, the slighter the change of direction that one can safely make in one jump, and at a very high speed it would, for this reason, be impossible to stop even in two jumps. There is nothing to prevent a runner from stopping or making a downhill turn at the highest possible speed by means of a series of jumps, but a turn so made covers so much ground that it is practically useless. This does not much matter, however, for the kind of snow which makes jumping round necessary is not such as to tempt one to run very fast.