From Football to Skiing

With my Packers done till September (and Favre, perhaps forever: can the Packers get Drew Brees in the offseason?), I can turn my full attention to nordic skiing.

I'm only half kidding. Tracking the World Cup competitions is pretty interesting, not least because Finland is cleaning up. Janne Ahonen is flying away with the title in ski jumping, a sport in which he is as dominant as any athlete has ever been in any sport. We're talking Jordanesque here. According to a Finnish paper, Ahonen won the most recent ski-jumping competition with a hill-record flight of 152 meters. Imagine flying through the air for 166 yards! With the win, "Ahonen also equalled the record for the number of individual World Cup competitions won in a single season. He now has eleven... What makes Ahonen’s achievement all the more astonishing is that the season is not yet half over: there have been only 13 competitions out of a total of 28. "

Stunning. Ski jumping - the wipeout during the old "Wide World of Sports" intro aside - is a fantastic sport to watch. I grew up within sight of a ski flying hill, Copper Peak, near Ironwood, Michigan, and I've been fascinated by ski jumping/flying ever since. I'm eager to see how Ahonen does over the rest of the season.