LUZERN – Monday evening the world’s first indoor ski jump opened its doors in the Swiss Mu-seum of Transport Lucerne. In the presence of 200 guests, among them Switzerland’s sports minister Ueli Maurer the first guests dared to jump down the new highlight – amongst helicop-ters, planes and other flying objects.
The “K8” – named after its size and the so-called “critical point (K)” - will allow visitors to expe-rience a jump from a safe perspective: hooked in cable guides they will know, what jumpers feel when going down the jump. Young jumpers on the other hand will be able to use the hill as an additional training facility year-around. Together with the Saxonian Peter Riedel GmbH the Swiss Ski Federation SWISS SKI initiated this project – according to the acid test on Monday evening the guests really liked what they saw. Even Prof. Peter Schröcksnadel, President of the Austrian Ski Federation stated jokingly before the opening: “I can only wish them luck – because that would mean we could abstain from using the wind rule in the future!”
Since the beginning of March the jump was test-mounted in a storehouse in Saxony, with the beginning of April the jump made her way down to Switzerland. Neither the sudden onset of winter in the Iron Mountains nor a longer flu of the CEO himself could endanger the plan, said Peter Riedel, CEO of the Peter Riedel GmbH:
„Such a project does not arrive every day. We did have some hurdles to overcome but in the end we stuck to our tight schedule. To see that everything is working out and that the people here are excited about the jump – that is the result, that I wanted to see!”
„The K8 is an important and trendsetting project for us and is a very good advertisment for our discipline. We managed to get some great publictiy for skijumping and SWISS SKI through our results over the last few years in both the worldcup and the Olympics. With this project we are able to reach out to a totally different clientele. The possibility of our young jumpers being able to use the jump untouched by both wind and weather is also not to be sneezed at. “ - Berni Schödler, discipline director Ski Jumping / Nordic Combined SWISS SKI
„I can only congratulate SWISS SKI and its partner on this project. It is another way and an important chance to further enthuse people for ski jumping. It allows the fans to get to know the experiences that correspond to their expectations of ski jumping. At the same time it is a chance to try for themselves, how challenging and extraordinary our sport is.” - Walter Hofer, Race Director FIS Ski Jumping
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