License to jump! : a story of women´s ski jumping

At the 2015 Nordic Ski World Championship in the Swedish resort Falun, the World Championship in womens ski jumping will be conducted. Women´s ski jumping did not have a smooth way to become an internationally acknowledged and accepted sport. However, that struggle is no longer discussed. In many European countries womens ski jumping regularly gets TV coverage and the print media covers it in its sports sections. This book aims to give insight into the at least 150-year-history of womens ski jumping from its beginnings until it became an Olympic sport in the 2014 Sochi Games. It shows the struggle and effort of female ski jumpers, coaches, families and others to make this sport internationally recognized and accepted. The chapters reflect a collection of research done by international authors. Due to the accessibility of sources the main focus is on Europe and North America. However, we do not claim to offer a complete history; there are many histories of womens ski jumping, depending on the geographic location. We tried to avoid an overlapping of contents, which was not always possible, because each chapter was to be an entity in itself. In the future, still, bit by bit, little pieces have to be added to the puzzle to gain a complete picture of the evolution of this sport. Although all authors have an academic background in sport history and/or sport sociology and sport media, the book is aimed to appeal to the general public. For all those readers who are interested in more details, footnotes and references are added.