In 2012 a ten-year-old from Park City, Utah, switched on her camera, looked down a 40-metre ski jump and talked herself into her first flight. Zia Terry’s video, “Girls first Ski Jump”, passed a million views on YouTube and brought her an invitation from the best women ski jumpers in the United States.
Zia Terry’s first 40-metre jump
Zia was a fourth grader when she filmed the jump. The camera records the long pause at the top, the nerves and the decision to go. She explained it later in her own words: “You’ve got the camera on, you can’t turn back.” And about the jump itself: “Once you go down, there’s no turning back.”
The clip, published on YouTube by the channel UK2NZ2NC2UT, struck a chord because almost everyone remembers a moment like it, whether on a diving board or a steep run. By March 2012 news reports put the views at well over a million, with KSL counting nearly 1.3 million.
An honorary place on the US women’s ski jumping team
On 22 March 2012 members of the US Women’s Ski Jumping Team invited Zia to meet them at the Utah Olympic Park in Park City. Sarah Hendrickson, then the world’s top-ranked woman jumper, told her the team wanted to thank her for showing more than a million people what ski jumping is like, and said the video “definitely hit home” because the jumpers recognised the feelings Zia showed.
The team made her an honorary junior member and gave her a team jacket. Her mother, Jennifer Terry, said the visit “has got to be the highlight of her life.” Zia said she loved the feeling of flight, wanted to try bigger jumps, and hoped to reach the Olympics one day and later coach children.
Women’s ski jumping on the road to Sochi
The timing made the story special. When Zia met the team, women’s ski jumping was heading to the Winter Olympics for the first time, and the athletes were preparing for that debut in Sochi, Russia, in 2014.
Hendrickson, born in Salt Lake City in 1994 and a graduate of Park City High School, had just won the first women’s World Cup season in 2011–12, taking nine competitions. She went on to win the normal-hill world title at Val di Fiemme in 2013. In Sochi she became the first woman ever to jump in an Olympic ski jumping event, only months after reconstructive knee surgery.
Learning to ski jump at Utah Olympic Park
Utah Olympic Park, about 45 km (28 miles) east of Salt Lake City, was built for the 2002 Winter Olympics, which held their ski jumping and Nordic combined events there. Its jumps opened in 1992 with hills of 18, 38, 65 and 90 metres, later joined by a 120-metre hill, and the park still trains Olympic and development athletes.
Young jumpers progress hill by hill under a coach, which is exactly the path a 40-metre jump like Zia’s belongs to. Start with a club or a supervised programme: the smaller hills are where every ski jumper, Olympic champions included, first learned to fly.
Explore more: how ski BASE differs from ski jumping; what a ski helmet can and cannot do.
No comments