The future of Ski Jumping

In nations where Ski Jumping has a long tradition, like for example, Poland, Germany, Norway, and Austria, it's needless to mention, that working with young athletes is fundamental to success. The necessary infrastructure and the hills exist.

These possibilities can't be offered to young ski jumpers in other countries, this makes it even more difficult to find and support young, talented athletes. But still, there are young ski jumpers in countries like Hungary, Georgia, and Serbia.
In order to support these young ski jumpers and nordic combiners, so-called FIS Development Camps, international training camps under the supervision of the International Ski Federation FIS, are held regularly.

The most recent Development Camp last week in Predazzo (ITA). A total of 45 young athletes in the age of 13 to 20 gained valuable experience on the facility where the competitions of the 2026 Olympic Winter Games in Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo will be held. 15 coaches of athletes and 5 FIS coaches also took part in this camp. With the new youth hills, which were built last year, the facility in Predazzo is a perfect venue for such a training camp.

Athletes representing nine countries participated: Belarus, Bulgaria, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, and Hungary.
The coaches received training about issues like competition equipment, body control and the organizational structure of an association.

The highlights, of course, where the training sessions on the hills. The young athletes had two training sessions each day.
And because the German national team around World Champion Markus Eisenbichler, Karl Geiger and Richard Freitag was also training in Predazzo at the same time, the youngster also had to chance to watch the best of the best in action and learn from them as well.

The training camp concluded with competitions on the HS 22, HS 32 and HS 66 hills, in which athletes of the local Italian clubs were also taking part. For some of the participants, this was the first international competition ever.

If a ski jumper or nordic combiner of one of these nine countries will compete in the 2026 Olympics, he probably was attending this training camp in 2019.

The next FIS Development Camp will be held in January 2020.