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| Jim Holland- made the transition to V style around ’91/’92. Ever the showman, he fell rarely but spectatularly! |
STORY No. 42
JIM HOLLAND
Age 45
Park City, UT
Ford Sayre Ski Club
Since I’m noticing a wipeout theme in some of these stories, I’ll take that as my cue to chime in.
Actually, I rarely crashed. We Hollands became known for our cat-like abilities to pull off some seemingly impossible saves. Although we often put ourselves in unimaginable positions over the knoll, in most cases, after quickly flashing our ski bases to the horrified onlookers at the top of the tower (this of course a calculated tactic employed mainly in training to psych out the competition), we generally set it down cleanly. We often did so by employing the patented “Holland Swim” – a technique discovered by brother Mike and passed on to Joe and me. To execute the swim, you start by jumping off of one foot or by having one ski dive or stray off to one side in the air. Then you just pedal like mad with your hands, frantically shoveling the air molecules from one side of your body to the other in a rapid side-to-side dog paddle motion. If you can throw down with the swim at an opportune time, you’ll find that this also seems to make the competition extremely nervous. Witnessing the swim is like seeing Medusa: you can’t get it out of your head and it’s nearly impossible to focus on your take-off.
When I did crash (generally about once a year), I always tried to make it as spectacular as possible. In 1993 we were in Lahti Finland for the World Cup. Ski jumping flight curves used to be much higher (to borrow from Monty Python, “We had it tough!”), and for some reason in 1993 the big hill in Lahti was flying especially high. I can remember standing at the top of the tower with Tad Langlois before our first training jump that year. We were bugging out. It looked like an old-school ski flying flight trajectory. We slid a couple off without incident, and then for the third jump Zane Palmer, who was coaching at the time, moved down to the 40m tower to get some air flight video. The air was a gusty side-cross tail wind quartering from the right rear. The other coaches were all on the coach’s stand watching the wind meters but Zane was focused on the video view-point. He flagged me right away and I dropped in the track. I had a good start but I was a little too aggressive and didn’t let it build. It’s best to be a little patient when you have a tail wind. Let it build. When I was at the apex over the knoll, my left ski abruptly shot straight down. It happened so fast that there wasn’t even time to do the swim. I clearly remember the delayed frame-by-frame view of those ski pack marks on the knoll pulling me in as I plummeted to the earth in a full daffy. Then my memory seems to skip ahead a bit… As I clambered to my feet, I grabbed Rick Mewborn’s shoulder for stability and gave the EMT guys the thumbs up so they wouldn’t try to strap me to a back board.
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| Holland’s last view of the Lahti K120 tower as he cleared the knoll. |
Although I found myself out of the World Cup due to a cracked wrist, I think I did effectively psyche some of the competition out –my spectacular crash was apparently all over the TV for a few days in Finland –and the Finnish ladies were quite sympathetic.
