Ski Jumping

The Austrian Georg Schlierenzauer is a 16-year-old student. The Norwegian Anders Jacobsen is 20 and works full time in the summer as a plumber. Both are little-known professional ski jumpers.

They are among the favorites at the 55th annual Four Hills Tournament, a series of ski jumping world cup events that starts this weekend in Oberstdorf, a town in the Bavarian Alps.

Ski jumping athletes tend to have brilliant, short-lived careers, and when athletes win one season and lose every tournament thereafter, it makes it difficult for the sport to sustain its fan base.

The Finn Toni Nieminen was at one time a ski jump hot shot. In 1992, at the age of 16, he won the Four Hills Tournament, Olympic gold and the ski jumping World Cup.

"You just jumped and lived. In between, you felt pulled like a sheep on a rope," Nieminen said.

After his winning year, Nieminen didn't win a single tournament for the rest of his career.

Many other ski jumpers have similar experiences to Nieminen's. They have a short, golden period and then burn out. Martin Schmitt and Sven Hannawald are two good examples of this rapid fall from grace. At the turn of the millennium, they regularly placed in the top 10 at ski jumping competitions. Schmitt was nicknamed the "Ski Eagle."

Falling stars

Hannawald's sweep of the individual Four Hills Tournament titles in 2002 marked the high point for the ski jumping boom in Germany. Two years later, Hannawald revealed he suffered from burnout and entered psychiatric treatment. A year later, he announced he was ending his ski jumping career.

Schmitt, the wildly popular 1999 and 2000 World Cup winner, spent four years waiting for another victory.

"The winning times are over," said ski jumping national trainer Peter Rohwein. It's unrealistic to expect someone from the German team to win the tournament, he said.

The Austrian Andreas Goldberger also could not match the success of his younger days. From 1992 to 1996 he dominated the ski jumping world and won the World Cup three times. In the next decade, he couldn't win a single competition.

"Ski jumping is an unfathomably technical sport where unbelievably small things affect performance," Nieminen, the Finnish jumper, said. "That makes washing out an occupational disease. Only one little thing needs to go wrong and you find yourself stuck in a very difficult situation."

Jumpers lose their rhythm and most find it nearly impossible to regain it.

Dwindling interest

In Germany, as the popular ski jumping stars crashed and burned, spectators lost interest. In 2001, 9.57 million people watched the final of the Four Hills Tournament. In 2005, the tournament had only 5.48 million viewers. The market share for ski jumping coverage at the private television channel RTL dropped almost 20 points to 28 percent.

"That's still a very good rating," said RTL spokesman Matthias Bolhöfer.

It's questionable whether RTL continues to make a profit on the event with advertising, since the station pays approximately 14 million euros each year to the German ski association for broadcasting rights. The contract runs out after the current season and it's unclear what will happen.

"The negotiation situation has fundamentally changed, and it's also connected to the sport's performance," Bolhöfer said.

Less money means fewer resources for training and youth coaching, which can create a vicious circle. As the success of ski jumping in Germany is on the line, pressure on athletes increases.

Since the "Ski Eagle" stopped jumping, the Internet site skispringen.com, dedicated to the sport, has noticed a huge drop in the number of hits from Germany, said Peter Siegel. It reached a low point at the beginning of 2006 and has begun to go back up, he said.

"If a German finishes in the top ten, that would be a success. One can also hope that Martin Schmitt's performance will finally increase."

Nieminen is philosophical about his short-lived success.

"The year I had was one that few athletes experience," Nieminen said. "You have to be content and feel lucky to have experienced that. Despite everything, it's only a sport. It's not everything in life."