Raschau/RAMSAU 23th of November 2013 - The test track of the Austrian Ski Federation is continuing to talk about itself: What Peter Riedel GmbH has put on its feet within a short time, encounters consistently on interest and enthusiasm in the international ski jumping. Again and again, there are experts and those interested in Ramsau am Dachstein, in order to assess the facility personally. There can exercise and test, obviously, merely for Austrian athletes.

To be honest, everything had already started much, much earlier, around 40 years ago! As Eberhard Riedel, the former GDR Alpin star (winner in Adelboden , 1961, three -time Olympic participants) wrote his dissertation, which dealt with a subject from the jumping. The extravagant title in 1974 was: "The influence of ski tension, ski flooring and the ski preparation to the start up speed of the ski jump". That sounded not just flowery, but also after a lot of work.  "Ebs" Riedel set has up in Oberwiesenthal at the Fichtelberg jump a test track of 120 meters at the outlet where he performed 900 trials with different ski brands and types of flooring. He realized the immense importance of friction between snow, ice and ski and that this should have to be reduced in order to influence the speed factors positively. And Riedel came to the conclusion that a permanent test track with a stationary measuring device would be less susceptible to interference than a provisional facility.

The findings of Eberhard Riedel were in East Germany let's say: not given due attention. After all, it was ski jumping, a sport, that was practiced only by a few - and for that you would now have to take on additional financial resources. In addition the feedback from the athlete himself was not entirely positive. Jochen Dannenberg for example complained that the track would be faster than necessary  with Riedel's proposed methods.

Thus, the dissertation was forgotten, and there are (also) the merits of the son the father gets once again focused into the limelight with the jump run. Peter Riedel is in fact an internationally recognized expert in the field of inrun track construction on ski jumps, plans, manufactures and designs in Japan as well as in Russia and central and northern Europe and developed his portfolio also because of the of "Ebs" Riedel explanations.

And then came the year 2013, where one of the most important ski federations in the world, the Austrian, with Riedel and REHAU a partnership concluded and had a clear target: the creation of a permanent test track in Ramsau am Dachstein.

More about Peter and Eberhard Riedel in their book "traces of success" to order on amazon under www.amazon.de/Spuren-Erfolgs-Skifahren-Skisprung-Erzgebirge/dp/3902480793/ref=sr_1_1