Ski Jumping at the 2018 Winter Olympics

The ski jumping program at the 2018 Olympics was identical with the program in Sochi 2014: Normal hill, individual for women and men; large hill for men, both individual and a 4-man team event. In the men’s individual events, a qualifying event was held, allowing the top 50 to compete in the final. After the first round, only the top 30 reached the second round. In the team event, 12 teams qualified through the results from World Cup competitions in the 2017/18 season in competitions prior to the Olympics. The wind and gate factors, introduced by FIS in 2009 and used during the Sochi Games, was in use for the second time in Olympic ski jumping history. Female ski jumpers competed in the Olympics for the second time, but only on the normal hill, in spite of their campaign to also compete in the large hill.

The ski jumping events took place at the Alpensia Ski Jumping Centre, opened in 2008, with a crowd capacity of 8,500 for the Olympics. The landing area was used as an association football venue in summer, with a crowd capacity of 13,500. The normal hill has a hill size of 109 m, the large hill’s hill size is 142 m. Turkey competed in ski jumping for the first time in Olympic history, but their jumper, 20-year old Fatih Arda İpçioğlu, failed to advance from the qualifying round on both hills. Norway had the most successful team, winning the team event and achieving another gold by Maren Lundby in the women’s competition, in addition to one silver and two bronze medals in the men’s individual event. The German Andreas Wellinger won gold on the normal hill in addition to two more silver medals and was the most successful jumper of the Games. The Pole Kamil Stoch won the gold on the large hill in a close contest with Wellinger, adding a bronze medal to his collection as a member of the team from Poland in the team event.

The Japanese jumping legend, Noriaki Kasai, competed in his eighth Olympics at PyeongChang, the most ever by a winter Olympian and, at the age of 45, he became the oldest ski jumper in Olympic history, surpassing the previous record of Hungarian Pál Ványa, who was 43 when he competed in 1948.