Lillehammer

Balbergskaret

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Balbergbakken:

K-Point:	120 m
Hill record:	130.5 m (Tom Levorstad , 1981)

Year of construction:	1972
Conversions:	1984
Further jumps:	K40, K25, K15
Status:	destroyed
Plastic matting:	no
Ski club:	Lillehammer Ski Club

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History:

After the old ski jump at Lysgård had been closed down in 1964, Lillehammer was searching for a new location for a large hill for a few years. In 1969 the plans for the construction of a new ski jump at Balberg, direction of Fåberg, a few kilometers north of Lillehammer, were decided on. Finally in 1972 Balbergbakken was inaugurated, but the costs exploded from originally estimated 350,000 crownes onto more than 1m NOK. As a consequence the planned normal hill and floodlights could not be set up.
On the second-largest ski jumping facility of Norway just behind Vikersund Norwegian Championships were held in 1973 (Winner Nils-Per Skarseth), 1978 (Per Bergerud) and 1983 (Per Bergerud). On 1984-03-09 the only World Cup on Balbergbakkene was hosted, winner was Pavel Ploč attended by crowd of 5,000 spectators.
Originally it was intended to take Balbergbakken also as a site for Olympic Winter Games 1994, but due to high conversion costs Lysgårdsbakken with the Olympic stadium was constructed instead and the ski jumps at Balbergskaret were given up. Significantly the very last competition, the Junior NM in 1992, had to be cancelled due to a lack of snow.