berkutschi.com: New starting track at Kulm

The Ski Flying World Championships 2016 are history — a successful story. Under generally difficult conditions, the organizers were able to crown two worthy world champions, Peter Prevc and the Norwegian team.

Wind conditions and snowfall pushed judges and the organizing committee to the limits several times, even causing the fourth round of the individual competition on Saturday to be canceled, which, given the remaining rounds, became an insignificant side issue.

One of the key factors of this success was the new starting track, a starting track that was installed basically at the last moment before the World Championships, and there is only one like it in the world on a ski jumping hill — at Kulm.

Cancellation eases the decision

Originally, the Austrian Ski Association (ÖSV) wanted to do away with the modern plastic starting tracks entirely. Athletes at Bischofshofen and at the Bergisel in Innsbruck, for example, start on conventional ice tracks (these are compact ice blocks about 25 cm high that are cooled with an integrated cooling system, and the required profile for both tracks is milled in with the help of a so-called track mill).

In contrast to a conventional launch track, where the entire, about 25 cm high ice block must be cooled, with modern plastic tracks only the actual contact area of about 7–8 cm thickness is cooled, so considerably less energy is required. Especially in rain, mild temperatures and light wind, the modern plastic system is much more resistant to external influences.

Only the cancellation at Kulm on Sunday last year, when due to heavy rain the launch track no longer functioned, although it was protected from rain by a cover (moisture had found its way from below through the ice block) and a “kink” in the launch track, but at the last moment tipped the switches in favor of the plastic ice track at Kulm for the 2016 World Championships.

The kink is gone

“For me it was absolutely the right decision and for me the future is to rely on these modern launch tracks,” says Harald Heim, who was in charge as race director at the 2016 World Championships. “At Kulm it was such that the cancellation from last year the infamous kink in the launch (which occurred at the transition from the concrete part to the steel part of the launch) could only be removed by a very costly measure in the launch. Since we were sure that this kink or this edge could be removed when installing the plastic track, the decision in the end was easier.”

All expectations met

“The new track worked absolutely without problems,” looks back after a successful World Championship. “Especially in flight, a smooth and disturbance-free approach is an essential part of the flight. If that is not guaranteed, it becomes dangerous during flight.”

World’s first plastic launch track on a ski jumping hill

While the principle of plastic ice tracks on normal and large hills is already widespread, the installation at Kulm was a world premiere. “Looking back, it was quite a tricky story for us. I was convinced from the start that it would work, but there was no guarantee,” explains Peter Riedel, who installed the launch track at Kulm. “Compared with launch tracks on large hills, parameters are strongly different. Foremost the much higher speeds of the athletes during the approach, whose forces are completely different from the approach to a large hill. Then the length, which with 122 meters is for example 17 meters above the Olympic jump in Partenkirchen. We had to use different materials than we would for ‘normal’ launch tracks, more modules were built end to end, and so on. The difficulty also lies in the fact that you cannot test such a track; there is no test facility of this dimension. So we have to build on our accumulated experience, which worked very well at Kulm,” concludes Riedel.

Source: berkutschi.com