From Junior to World Cup - ski jumping in Slovenia
Slovenia from few years now belongs to the world’s top in ski jumping. How is that possible that this small country has so many good ski jumpers and wins with the teams like Norway, Finland, Austria or Germany? The secret is that Slovenia has many ski clubs in which the young adepts of ski jumping can train and in the future become a star of this sport.
This system is well-known also in other countries, but in Slovenia you can clearly see how the now generation of athletes is created. The public and sport schools have a good contact with the local ski clubs, so there is no problem for the young athletes to connect education with trainings. For a ski jumper and every athlete it is important to begin the adventure with sport in very young age. Many ski jumpers began to train in age of 7 or 8. It is important for them to find the right coach and have a possibility to train under professional care. Especially for the young ski jumpers the Slovenians created a tournament which is held every year. It is called a “Cockta Pokal” and in this special kind of competition the ski jumpers in few different age categories compete with each other. It is the very good place for them to compete, because the rivalry and competitions are very important for young jumpers to try their skills and show themselves in front of the big crowd.
The most talented ski jumpers among them have a chance to perform at the FIS Cup or Alpen Cup competitions and eventually find place in the National teams. The Slovenian Ski Federation (Smučarska zveza Slovenije) created 3 men’s teams and 2 women’s teams with also a possibility to become a candidate to one of the teams with the support of the Ski Federation. It is very important, because when ski jumper finds himself in the national team he mostly doesn’t have to worry that much about the equipment and money for trainings, because the Ski Federations give a lot of opportunities for ski jumpers to get a sponsor and it also supports financially the trainings itself.
No matter in which team the ski jumper finds himself, the coaches give them an opportunity to promote to the higher team or if the results are very good to show his talent in the World Cup. And in this way in the World Cup we can see now a lot of young, talented Slovenians, like 19-year-old Cene Prevc and Anze Lanisek.
Slovenia has a lot of young, flourishing, talented ski jumpers and that doesn't surprise that in the team competitions we can see new shining stars of this sport.
