As you feel the ground, but not before, drop smartly into Telemark position, with the weight well forward. This helps to diminish the shock, and also, of course, the chance of a fall backwards or forwards. It is such a help to the balance that when you have got into the habit of it, you will be inclined to begin the forward stride in the air. Be careful to avoid doing so, for, if you do, you may strike the snow with one ski sooner than with the other, which will very likely upset you. There is the same danger if you land with your skis apart instead of close together.
As the skis strike the snow, they bend in the middle and each makes a depression in the snow. From the deepest part of the hindmost of these depressions to the edge of the platform is the measure of the jump. The record stands at present at 47 metres (154 feet); you will do well if you jump a tenth of this distance without falling by the end of your first day’s practice.
As you drop into the Telemark position, keep the ankles and knees well inwards and let the pressure be rather on the inside of the foot, or your skis may run apart and upset you.
Only run in Telemark position until you are certain that you have your balance. You should, if possible, make a merely momentary dip and then straighten up smartly and finish your run in the normal position, stopping yourself on the level by a swing or a jump round as soon as you can.
General Hints
Ski-jumping to the ordinarily constituted person who tries it for the first time is extremely alarming. Although when the whole of the hillside is of the same steepness he may from the starting-point see something of the lower part of the slope, the exact spot on which he will land is nearly always hidden from the jumper until just before he reaches the edge of the platform, and even from that point it is still invisible if the platform is built back from the edge of a steep slope. When the lower part of the jumping-hill is steeper than the upper, as it nearly always is, the platform, seen from above, appears to be projecting over the edge of a cliff.
This at first gives all but exceptionally bold spirits an irresistible desire to shrink back on approaching it, and it usually takes one some time to overcome this desire, even after realising that there is practically no danger at all. Even when the jumper feels no fear his natural disinclination to make his spring until he can see where he is going to land will for some time tend to make him defer the “Sats” until too late.
The instinct to shrink back is, at any rate at first, the principal difficulty in ski-jumping, and I think you will find that the best way to overcome it is, in a sense, to give way to it—that is, to start under conditions which are as little alarming as possible and to increase the difficulty by very slow degrees.
Begin by making very short jumps on a quite moderate slope, no steeper below than above the platform, which must be quite low and long.
The fact of the slope being a gentle one does actually add to the difficulty of standing, but only to a very slight extent if the platform is quite low; and this form of hill is so much the least alarming, that I advise you to choose it for your first attempts.