THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

I have always felt very close to ski-jumpers.  I literally grew up on skis and, like all the kids in Sachrang, dreamt about becoming a great ski-jumper and national champion.  This was until a friend of mine had a horrifying accident.  Then, suddenly, with Swiss ski jumper Walter Steiner there was someone who could fly like a bird, someone who could physically experience everything I once dreamed of: overcoming gravity.

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Ski-jumping is not just an athletic pursuit, it is something very spiritual too, a question of how to master the fear of death and isolation.  It is a sport that is at least partly suicidal, and full of utter solitude.  A downhill racer might be able to stop himself if he needs to, but when jumpers start down that track nothing can stop them.  It is as if they are flying into the deepest, darkest abyss there is.

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And it is rarely muscular athletic men up there on the ramps; always it is young kids with deathly pale pimply complexions and an unsteady look in their eyes.  They dream they can fly and want to step into this ecstasy which pushes against the laws of nature.

Cronin/Herzog