First jumps at Chaykovskiy performed

on 2012-02-17

With the first jumps being performed on the three hills K125, K95 and K65 in the last days the "Snezhinka" ski jumping complex at Chaykovskiy was inaugurated and therewith the first modern ski jumping facility of Russia was handed over to its designation

After around two years of construction time the first ski jumps on the brand new and top-modern ski jumps at Chaykovskiy in Perm region could be performed. Since 2009 a total of 4.4 billion Rubel (110 million Euro) has been invested in the Snezhinka winter sports complex with ski jumping hills, cross-country trails, biathlon range and hotel.

For nearly two weeks a delegation around Peter Riedel, the manufacturer of the SKI-Line inrun tracks with jumping dynamics measuring system, has been in Chaykovskiy in order to prepare the hills and perform first trial jumps on the K65 hill. On February 13 even a few junior athletes from Partenkirchen travelled to Russia and after FIS inspector Pekka Hyvärinen had approved both international size hills, the first jumps on HS 106 ski jump could be performed on Wednesday. The first jumper on the bakken was 45 year-old local senior athlete Nikolai Chirkov.

Yesterday, on Thursday the HS 140 hill could be inaugurated as well and Dmitri Ipatov managed to jump the preliminary record distance of 120 meters. The athletes from Partenkichen and further Russian ski jumpers participated as well. Vladimir Slavsky, vice-president of the Russian ski jumping federation commented euphorically on "skijumping.ru": "A historical event for Russia took place at Chaykovskiy today. Now we have one of the world's best ski jumping facilities. This is the unanimous opinion of the athletes, trainers and functionals!"

In March 2012 the first official competitions will be held on the "Snowflake" ski jumping hills with Russian championships and for the international test event, a summer grand prix in September 2012, the complete facility with the plastic covered hills K125, K95, K65, K45 and K20 should be complete.