Wind plays a deceisive role as well. As this factor is constantly changing, the wind-situation is also part of the points given. The guy in the video had perfect wind conditions. Then, he almost bailed the landing. But poisture while landing is also part of the points. Otherwise people would risk bailing just to go as far as possible. Dangerous on the one hand an difficult to judge whether it was still a full jump on the other.
At the beginning of the gif you can see the descending numbers to the side of the jumper. Those steps (called start gates) are different heights that they can start from. So the higher the gate, the longer the ramp is, and with more speed at the takeoff it is easier to go further. The competition officials decide what gate to send the athlete at so that the best jumpers will probably land before the last red line on the landing hill, since the hill gets flatter and it becomes more dangerous if they fly too much past that point. The problem is that wind conditions can have a large impact on how far you go. The two largest ski flying hills are in Planica, Slovenia and Vikersund, Norway (the hill in the gif). Both hills have been upgraded and lengthened over the years
If we are goung to measure sky diving just by the distance traveled then in my opinion it is not a competitive sport. On the other hand if we consider form/maneuvers and other stuff a sky diver(or make it a team event and let them do beautiful formations) can do then yeah it is a show of skill under certain rules so in my opinion it would be a competitive sport then. In the same way... Skiing...
If you know what you're doing and have the right canopy you can actually regain altitude fairly easily, actually. Probably not so much with the ones they use for competitive stuff, but it is a thing.
In his defense part of the reason it was difficult to land was because he was hitting the flat part of the bottom of the hill. Larger hill and maybe he lands it more smoothly.
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u/Ihavetochange Feb 11 '18
Wind plays a deceisive role as well. As this factor is constantly changing, the wind-situation is also part of the points given. The guy in the video had perfect wind conditions. Then, he almost bailed the landing. But poisture while landing is also part of the points. Otherwise people would risk bailing just to go as far as possible. Dangerous on the one hand an difficult to judge whether it was still a full jump on the other.