Oslo

In the home country of skiing the first ski jumping competitions took place from 1879 to 1891 on Husebybakken in the western part of Oslo. On January 31, 1892 around 5 km north of it a new ski jumping hill at Holmenkollen was inaugurated. Attended by an outrageous number of 20,000 spectators the first winner jumped 22.5 m.

Since then the traditional Holmenkollen competitions took place, which later became skiing festivals and now are the regular World Cup competitions in March. With the development of ski jumping of course the ski jump changed its outline, and up to now it has been converted 14 times. In 1904 the takeoff, which was constructed out of wood and snow, was replaced by a stone construction, ten years later the first wooden inrun tower was built and stood until 1927, when it destructed only one day after a tournament. In 1928 the construction of a 19 m high new tower began, as well as the enlargement and drainage of the landing hill and outrun and then for the World championships a worthy ski jumping facility could be presented.

With the 40 meters high tower, which was made out of concrete in 1939, for the first time more than 60 meters could be jumped. World War II interrupted sports for six years and for the first competition after the war 106,000 spectators came to “Fredsrennet”, one of them king Haakon VII.

When the Olympic Winter Games 1962 were opened, participants were astonished by the new inrun of the ski jump which was supported by concrete columns and had symmetrical spectator traverses on both sides.

Since there have been ski jumping World Champions on large and normal hill since 1962, for the WSC 1966 Midtstubakken was built about 500 m away. Before the WSC 1982 the whole facility was renovated again, the last larger conversion took place in 1992. For the WSC 2011 the concrete inrun of Holmenkollen was destroyed and the hill was rebuild.