Ski Jumping Trivia
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50 free Ski Jumping trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Ski jumping is one of the oldest Winter Olympic sports and still one of the strangest to explain: athletes hurl themselves off a ramp at 90 km/h, hold a V for five seconds and are then marked on how gracefully they land. This quiz covers the sport from Sondre Norheim's Telemark and the first Holmenkollen meeting to today's 250-metre ski flying records, taking in the K-point, the five-judge style panel, gate and wind compensation, the BMI rule and why the V-style was mocked before it conquered the world. The legends are all here: Matti Nykänen's three golds in Calgary, Eddie the Eagle and the rule named after him, Simon Ammann's Harry Potter podium, Adam Malysz, Janne Ahonen, Gregor Schlierenzauer, Kamil Stoch, Ryoyu Kobayashi's Grand Slam and Sara Takanashi's record World Cup wins. There are questions on the Four Hills Tournament, Planica and Vikersund, and on the long fight to get women's ski jumping into the Olympics. About a third of the questions are easy for anyone who watches on New Year's Day, a third are medium and the rest will test real Nordic skiing fans. Every answer is checked against reference and biography pages, and each question carries its source.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which country was ski jumping first contested, in the 19th century?
Norway
Norway's first recorded jump dates to 1808, when army officer Olaf Rye is said to have launched himself through the air in front of his fellow soldiers.
Q 02Ski jumping and which other discipline make up the traditional group of Nordic skiing?
Cross-country
Cross-country is the other half of the pair, and Nordic combined joins them: the best jumper starts the ski race first, and everyone else sets off behind in the order of their jumping scores.
Q 03In ski jumping, the line in the landing area that jumpers aim for is called what?
The K-point
The K-point is worth 60 points on Olympic hills, and every metre flown beyond it adds to the score while every metre short takes points away.
Q 04When ski jumps begin carrying dangerously far, what do officials move to take speed off the jumpers?
The start gate
The start gate is lowered so jumpers have a shorter run and less speed at take-off, and since 2009 anyone sent from a lower gate has been given extra points to make up for it.
Q 05In ski jumping, what happens to the highest and lowest of five judges' marks?
Discarded
Discarded: only the middle three marks count, each worth up to 20 points, so the most a jumper can earn for a flawless flight and landing is 60 on top of the points for distance.
Q 06Who is regarded as the father of modern ski jumping, winning the first competition with prizes in 1866?
Sondre Norheim
Sondre Norheim made the sport possible: he was the first to strap the heel to the ski, with bindings of willow and birch root, so that skis stayed on through a jump.
Q 07A 19th-century ski jumping contest at Huseby moved in 1892 to which venue, still in use?
Holmenkollen
Holmenkollen has even been jumped by a future king: Crown Prince Olav, later King Olav V, took to the hill himself as a young man.
Q 08Ski jumping has featured at every Winter Olympics since the first Games in 1924, held where?
Chamonix
Chamonix's ski jump was won by Jacob Tullin Thams, who twelve years later took a sailing silver in Berlin, making him one of the first athletes with medals from both Winter and Summer Games.
Q 09Olympic ski jumping uses which two hill sizes?
Normal and large
Normal and large have been the two Olympic sizes since 1964. The far bigger ski flying hills have never been used at the Games, so flyers have a world championship of their own instead.
Q 10The first ski jump over 100 metres was made in 1936 in which present-day country?
Slovenia
Slovenia was then part of Yugoslavia, and its new hill was by far the biggest in the world, built for exactly this: jumpers travelled there in 1936 chasing the first 100-metre leap.
Q 11The V-style, with ski tips spread apart, was made famous in the 1980s by a jumper from which country?
Sweden
Sweden's Jan Boklöv won the 1988-89 World Cup jumping that way, and by the 1992 Olympics every medallist had copied him.
Q 12How did judges first treat ski jumping's V-style in the 1980s?
Marked it down
Marked it down as bad form for years, yet the extra lift carried its users so much farther that they won anyway, and in the early 1990s the penalty was dropped.
Q 13Whose 254.5-metre flight in March 2025 set a new ski flying world record?
Domen Prevc
Domen Prevc landed it in front of a home crowd just over two weeks after his younger sister Nika had set the women's record, putting both world records in one family.
Q 21Which jumper has won the Four Hills Tournament a record five times?
Janne Ahonen
Janne Ahonen won it five times between 1999 and 2008, yet he never managed an individual Olympic medal, finishing fourth three times.
Q 22How did the 2005-06 Four Hills Tournament end, for the only time in its history?
With joint winners
With joint winners: after eight jumps over four hills, a Czech and a Finn had exactly 1,081.5 points each, so both were declared champion.
Q 23Matti Nykänen's third 1988 Olympic gold came in which new event?
Team jumping
Team jumping made its Olympic debut that year. Finland won it, and with both individual titles already his, he went home with every gold a ski jumper could win.
Q 14The landing style jumpers must perform, one foot ahead of the other with knees bent, is named after what?
A Norwegian county
A Norwegian county, Telemark, gave the landing its name, and a jumper who touches down with feet side by side instead is marked down by the judges.
Q 15Which wind gives ski jumpers extra lift, so the wind rule deducts points for it?
A headwind
A headwind gives a jumper more lift and a longer flight, so points are taken off for it, while anyone who jumps with the wind at their back has points added.
Q 16Ski jumpers below a minimum body mass index are penalised in what way?
They must use shorter skis
They must use shorter skis, which give less lift. The rule arrived in 2004, after a string of jumpers with eating disorders had starved themselves in the hope of flying farther.
Q 17Which American won the first women's Ski Jumping World Cup, in 2011-12?
Sarah Hendrickson
Sarah Hendrickson won nine events that first winter at 17. Six months before the women's Olympic debut she wrecked her knee in a fall, yet she recovered in time to be the first woman to jump at a Games.
Q 18The Four Hills Tournament is held at Oberstdorf, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Innsbruck and where else?
Bischofshofen
Bischofshofen traditionally comes last, on 6 January, so the overall winner is crowned there once eight jumps across the four hills have been added up.
Q 19The Four Hills Tournament visits Garmisch-Partenkirchen on which holiday?
New Year's Day
New Year's Day jumping in Partenkirchen is older than the tour, first held in 1953: the local club already had its traditional 1 January contest when it and friends from Innsbruck dreamed the tournament up.
Q 20Who was the first jumper to win all four events of a single Four Hills Tournament, in 2001-02?
Sven Hannawald
Sven Hannawald did it at the 50th edition, wearing bib number 50 all four times. Two years later he was diagnosed with burnout, which ended his career.
Q 24Matti Nykänen took up which second career after ski jumping?
Pop singer
Pop singer: a group of businessmen talked him into it as his jumping days ended, and his 1992 debut album sold more than 25,000 copies, enough for a gold record in Finland.
Q 25Eddie the Eagle became the first British Olympic ski jumper at which Games?
1988 Calgary
1988 Calgary saw him finish last on both hills, yet at the closing ceremony the organising chief told the athletes that some of them had 'soared like an eagle'.
Q 26The Eddie the Eagle Rule requires Olympic hopefuls to do what?
Rank near the top internationally
Rank near the top internationally: in the top 30 per cent or the top 50, whichever is fewer. The rule came in two years after his Olympics so that no part-timer could follow him.
Q 27Eddie Edwards learned of his Olympic qualification while working as a plasterer and living where?
A Finnish mental hospital
A Finnish mental hospital rented him a bed for a pound a night, the cheapest lodging he could find, and he was staying there as a guest, not a patient, when the news arrived.
Q 28Simon Ammann's look in 2002 drew comparisons to which fictional character?
Harry Potter
Harry Potter: he arrived at those Olympics without a major win to his name and left a star, booked within days as a guest on David Letterman's talk show.
Q 29Simon Ammann is the only ski jumper to do what at two Olympics?
Win both hills
Win both hills: he swept the individual events in 2002 and again in 2010, though in between he went five years without another major title.
Q 30Poland's Adam Małysz shares the male record of four World Cup overall titles with which jumper?
Matti Nykänen
Matti Nykänen won his four titles between 1983 and 1988, despite behaviour off the hill that twice got him thrown out of Finland's team.