Okay. Take a second. Just listen to that. Listen
to what? I don't really hear anything. Right.
Precisely. That is the sound of February 25,
2026. The silence has, well, it's finally returned
to the Valdifieme. The circus has left town.
Yeah. It's a heavy kind of silence, isn't it?
It really is. Because for the last few weeks,
this valley in northern Italy. specifically that
little pocket around Pradazzo, has been the absolute
center of the winter sports universe. The eyes
of the world, basically. Exactly. We have just
finished witnessing the massive spectacle of
the 2026 Winter Olympics. The ski jumpers have
packed up. The TV trucks are long gone. But we
are left with the physical structure itself.
And that structure is exactly our mission for
this deep dive today. Because we aren't looking
at the medal counts. Right. We aren't doing a
highlight reel of the athletes. Well, not primarily.
Which, honestly, is a completely fascinating
biography to dig into. Because when you look
at... Our source material, the historical records
and the technical specs. This isn't just a slope
covered in snow. Not at all. It's a structure
that cost billions of lire to build in the late
80s. Millions of euros to renovate just recently
for these specific games. And it has served as
this, I don't know, this strange concrete geopolitical
stage for the last 35 years. It really acts like
a mirror for whatever is happening in Europe
at any given time. Yeah. Transport ourselves
right there, mentally anyway. You are in Pradazzo,
nestled right in the Dolomites. They're a Nesco
World Heritage Site, by the way. Yeah, it is
stunning. Jagged peaks, the air is super crisp,
probably freezing, actually. And you are standing
at the base of this massive complex that just
hosted the Olympic ski jumping events from February
7th to the 16th, and the Nordic combined right
after that. Fresh off the global broadcast. Exactly.
And this is where I want to start the story.
If you were standing in this exact spot back
in, say, 1935, You wouldn't see any ski jumpers
flying through the air, would you? No, absolutely
not. If you were a local in the Val di Fiam in
the 1930s and you wanted to see someone hurl
themselves into the air on skis, you wouldn't
go to Prodazzo at all. You had to go way, way
up. Up the mountain. You'd be hiking up to the
roll pass. And when we say up, we're talking
serious altitude here. Oh, yeah. We're talking
1 ,984 meters above sea level. Wow. Yeah. The
local clubs, the Fiam Gial and the Dolomitica,
they managed to jump up there. And you really
have to picture the sea. There were no modern
elevators, no ceramic tracks, just guys in heavy
wool sweaters hiking up nearly 2000 meters to
just throw themselves off a mountain pass. It
sounds so incredibly rugged. I mean, it feels
like a completely different sport compared to
the highly aerodynamic spandex clad science we
just watched on TV. It was completely different.
It was raw. Now, they did modernize it a little
bit in 1973. It hosted some Alpencup events.
But by the late 80s, the sport was professionalizing
rapidly. It was becoming a TV spectacle. Right.
And the International Ski Federation, the FIS,
they looked at that roll pass setup. which was
just a K -65 hill, and basically said, this is
charming, but it's entirely obsolete. They needed
something permanent, something closer to actual
civilization. And the real catalyst for moving
down from that mountain pass wasn't just a sudden
desire for comfort. It was a very specific meeting
in Istanbul in 1988. That is the turning point,
yes. That is where the committee officially awarded
the 1991 Nordic World Ski Championships to the
Trentino region. Once they secured that bid,
The clock was ticking. They had to build something
worthy. They knew the old roll pass jump wasn't
going to cut it for a global broadcast. They
needed a flagship venue. So the Jeppe Dahl Ben
Arena was born. It was inaugurated in 1989. And
I was looking at the financial records for this
original construction in our sources. The number
is just staggering. 14 .5 billion lire. It sounds
like fantasy money to modern ears, doesn't it?
It really does. But what stuck out to me even
more was who actually paid for it. This wasn't
some private sports enterprise. It was fully
funded by the autonomous province of Trento.
Which is a massive statement of intent from the
local government. You have to understand that
in 1989, this facility was considered highly
avant -garde. That was the exact word used in
the press. The province wasn't just building
a hill for a weekend event. Right, they were
building a legacy. Exactly. They were trying
to future -proof the sport in Italy. They were
building a stadium meant to define the entire
region for decades. And it did define the region.
Almost immediately. This is the part of the deep
dive that really hooked me. We usually think
of stadiums as just concrete and steel. Static
objects. Just a backdrop. Exactly. But this arena,
specifically during that very first major event,
the 1991 World Championships, it... acted like
a literal time capsule. It really is one of those
incredibly rare moments where sport and geopolitics
collide head on. If you look at the results sheet
from 1991 held right here at this brand new arena,
you aren't just seeing names and jump distances.
You are looking at a map of a Europe that was
violently changing shape. So let's unpack that
for everyone listening, because the specific
stories are just incredible. Who are the ghosts
of 1991? Well, there are two distinct narratives
that played out right there on that podium. First,
you have Franci Pitek. He wins a medal at that
event. But look at the flag next to his name
in the historical record. Yugoslavia. And that
is deeply significant because of the timing.
It's incredibly tragic timing. It was effectively
the last time. Shortly after Pitek stood on that
podium in Pradaco, Yugoslavia dissolved into
a brutal war. Wow. Yeah, that medal was basically
the final sporting breath of a dying nation.
The stadium was brand new, gleaming white concrete,
but it was hosting the funeral of a country.
We are simply conveying the historical reality
of the event, but it's a very heavy piece of
trivia. It is a really heavy image. And then
in the exact same competition, almost like a
counterweight to that story, you have Jens Weisblog.
The absolute legend, Jens Weisblog. In that same
1991 competition, he wins an individual medal
for Germany. Now, pay close attention to the
nuance here. Not East Germany, not West Germany,
just Germany. This is the reunification. Exactly.
This was the very first time a German athlete
had won an individual medal after the reunification
of East and West. So in one single afternoon
on this one hill in Italy, you have the death
of Yugoslavia and the rebirth of a unified Germany
playing out in real time. It's fascinating. You're
sitting in the stands, maybe drinking a hot tea,
watching guys jump. And you're actually watching
the borders of Europe getting redrawn. That is
exactly what makes this venue so special it has
these ghosts built into the very foundation.
But of course, ghosts don't host the 2026 Olympics.
You need cutting edge hardware for that. And
that brings us to the actual anatomy of the place.
Right. Let's get technical because we've been
calling it the arena, but it's a massive complex,
3 ,000 square meters in total. And for the listeners
who may be tuned into the Olympics just for the
vibes and didn't catch the technical jargon,
we need to break down the hills. We definitely
do. It's a two hill setup primarily. You have
the long trampoline and the normal trampoline.
I always laugh at the term normal. trampoline
it sounds so casual like i'm just gonna go jump
the length of a football field today just normal
stuff well everything is relative in ski jumping
compared to the absolute monster next to it i
guess it feels normal so the long trampoline
is classified as an hs -136 okay let's pause
there for a second HS. We saw this graphic on
the screen constantly during the games this month.
HS versus pay point. I think a lot of people
treat them as the exact same thing, but they
are very different. Very different. Think of
the K point, which is 120 meters on this big
hill as the par for the course. It's the construction
point. It's the primary target. If you land perfectly
on the K line, you get 60 distance points. It's
where the hill is geometrically designed for
a perfect safe landing. HS stands for hills.
Here it's 136 meters. That is effectively the
safety limit of the structure. It's the point
where the slope of the landing hill starts to
flatten out significantly. So K point is the
goal and HS is the danger zone. Precisely. If
you jump past the HS, the physical forces on
your landing become exponential because you're
effectively dropping onto flat ground from three
stories up in the air. Your knees simply can't
take the impact. That makes a lot of sense. So
when we see that red line on the TV broadcast,
that's usually the HS. Right. And on the normal
hill, the HS is 104 meters with a K -point of
95. A fun little detail for the true nerds out
there, it was actually classified as an HS -106.
until 2017, but the FIS adjusted the measurement
rules slightly. They're always tweaking the numbers.
Yeah. Now, there is one feature of the Giuseppe
d 'Alben Arena that I found really interesting
in our source material, especially since we literally
just watched at Winter Olympics, the surface
itself. Ah, yes. The ceramic tracks. Because
you'd naturally assume a ski jump is completely
useless without snow, but that's not the case
here at all. Not at all. And that was a crucial
part of its avant -garde design back in the 80s,
and even more so now. The in -run tracks, the
grooves, the skiers slide down before they hit
the takeoff, are made of a highly specialized
ceramic material. And the landing hill is covered
in these interlocking plastic mats that mimic
the exact friction of snow. Which means the entire
facility doesn't just shut down in March when
things thaw. Exactly. They can operate 12 months
a year. Athletes can train in July just as easily
as they do in February. In fact, Summer Grand
Prix ski jumping is a huge part of the sports
calendar now. That feels like a massive competitive
advantage. If you own the facility, your local
athletes aren't flying around the globe chasing
winter just to get reps in. They are just driving
down the road to Pradaso. It creates a perfectly
consistent training environment. You aren't worried
about melting tracks or soft slush on the landing.
The ceramic is identical every single time you
sit on the bar. That kind of consistency builds
champions. Speaking of building champions, I
was looking at the list of the other hills in
the complex. Because it's not just the two big
Olympic ones we saw on TV. No, you can't just
strap a pair of skis on a six -year -old and
push them off the HS -136. That would be... Completely
terrifying. Terrifying and probably illegal.
So they have what they call the school jumps.
This is the Stalliman area. There's a K -60,
an HS -35, an HS -20, and the Baby Hill, which
is an HS -16. It's an entire ecosystem. You enter
the sport as a little kid on the HS -16, and
hopefully 15 years later, you're flying off the
big one. There's one other connection in the
building that I absolutely loved finding in the...
research. It involves the Marciolonga. The legendary
cross -country race. Yes. So for those who don't
follow it, the Marsalonga is this incredibly
grueling 70 -kilometer cross -country ski race.
And the organizers are actually headquartered
directly inside the ski jumping stadium building.
And the race course physically passes straight
through the arena every single January. That
is just such a cool visual to me. You have the
ski jumpers flying high overhead, the sprinters
of the sky, and right underneath them you have
thousands of cross -country skiers grinding out
70 kilometers. physically connects the two vastly
different worlds of Nordic skiing in one space.
It anchors the stadium in the local community,
too. It's not just some scary elite tower on
a hill that only the pros are allowed to use.
It's a central hub for the biggest sporting event
in the valley. But hubs age over time. Concrete
cracks. Technology moves on. And 1989 was a long
time ago. It was. And when the IOC came knocking
to award the 2026 Games, the region knew they
couldn't just slap a fresh coat of paint on 30
-year -old technology. You cannot host a modern,
high -definition Olympics with 1991 infrastructure.
So they had to get out the checkbook again. They
certainly did. In the fall of 2022, they started
a massive renovation project to prepare for what
we just watched. The final cost was approximately
36 million euros. That is a serious facelift.
I mean, 14 .5 billion layer in the 80s was a
lot. But 36 million euros today is a massive
public investment. What exactly do you get for
that kind of money? You get a completely modernized,
state -of -the -art venue. They reprofiled both
of the main jumps to perfectly match modern aerodynamic
flight standards. They rebuilt the spectator
stands. They built a brand new judges tower.
But the lighting, that was a major key line item.
Because of the TV broadcast. TV demands absolute
perfection. The night events we just watched,
those dramatic, gorgeous shots of the jumpers
launching into the pitch black. sky illuminated
perfectly. That is all thanks to the new lighting
array. It has to be completely flicker free for
the high definition slow motion cameras. But
there was one specific upgrade that caught my
eye in the specs. Seems like a tiny detail, but
I bet the athletes care about it more than anything
else. They replaced the old chairlift. Yes, with
a fully enclosed inclined elevator. Now, to the
average person listening, that might just sound
like a luxury or the athletes don't want to sit
on a cold chairlift. But there is a real physiological
reason for this, isn't there? It is purely about
athletic performance. Think about the old setup
for a second. You are a jumper in a paper -thin,
highly aerodynamic suit. It's minus 10 degrees
outside. You have to sit on a slow open -air
chairlift for 10 or 15 minutes just to get to
the top of the tower. What happens to your body?
You completely freeze. Your muscles just tighten
up. Exactly. Your core body temperature drops
significantly. You lose all that explosive elasticity
you desperately need for the takeoff. An inclined
elevator is a warm, enclosed cabin. It gets you
to the top much faster. You stay loose. You stay
entirely focused. 36 million euros buys you shiny
infrastructure, sure. But that specific elevator
upgrade buys you measurably better athletic performance.
And clearly, the performance was there. The venue
held up beautifully for the Games this month.
It really did. It has now officially cemented
itself as an Olympic legend, joining the ranks
of historic places like Littlehammer and Nagano.
Now, we cannot talk about a ski jumping arena
without talking about the Kings of the Hill.
We need to talk about the records. We do. And
the record books here are really interesting
to parse through because you have distinct eras.
You have the before 2026 era and the right now
era. Let's start with the legends from the past.
Who owned this hill before this month? For a
very long time, the name to beat was Adam Małdżas,
the Polish eagle. Oh man, if you followed winter
sports in the early 2000s, you couldn't escape
him. He was everywhere. He was a total phenomenon.
In the 2003 World Championships, which were held
right here in Pradazzo, he was completely untouchable.
He set official records on both of the hills.
He jumped 136 meters on the large hill and 107
.5 meters on the normal hill. And that 136 -meter
record on the big hill stood for a remarkably
long time. It did. Roshu Kobayashi, the Japanese
superstar, managed to equal it in 2019 during
a World Cup event. But Marsh's shadow basically
loomed over Pradazzo for two full decades. But
there is always an asterisk when it comes to
ski jumping records, isn't there? The unofficial
jumps? Because I saw some numbers in the research
that were way, way bigger than 136. There are
always bigger jumps hiding in the footnotes.
You have the Nordic combined athletes or training
rounds where the judges might set the starting
gate a bit higher. For example, Eric Frenzel
jumped 138 .5 meters in 2013. And Samuel Costa
in 2016 flew a massive 142 meters in a Nordic
combined event. 142 meters. That completely crushes
the Mausch's record. Wasn't that the headline
record on the TV graphic? Because the FIS is
highly particular about their bureaucracy, official
Hill records generally only count if they happen
in a specific top tier of competition, usually
a pure ski jumping World Cup or an Olympic event,
and usually only if the jumper stands up the
landing and doesn't crash. Training jumps or
combined events often just get relegated to the
unofficial list. Bureaucracy and gravity. I love
it. But all of those footnotes and all of those
old official records, they just became completely
irrelevant. They really did. Because we have
a brand new king. This is the headline for the
deep dive today. Yeah. February 2026. The Olympics.
Dome and Preview. Just a few days ago. Dome and
Preview. Absolutely uncorked one. 141 .5 meters.
Official competition. Official record. 141 .5
meters. I was trying to visualize that earlier
today. It is immense. It's nearly one and a half
standard football fields. Imagine jumping from
one goal line, flying over the entire field and
landing halfway down the next field without an
engine. It is basically falling with style for
seven or eight seconds straight. And doing it
with absolute perfect control, that jump completely
resets the standard for this facility. The Mayuse
era is officially over. We are firmly in the
Prevec era now. And we definitely shouldn't forget
the women's record on the Normal Hill because
that one has held remarkably strong for a while.
Absolutely. Sarah Hendrickson. She jumped 108
point blitos meters back in 2012. That actually
stayed as a women's world record for a time.
It highlights that this venue has been a prominent
stage for the absolute best in the world, regardless
of gender, for decades now. So when you zoom
out and look at the whole picture. We have gone
from guys hiking up Roll Pass in wool sweaters
in the 1930s. To a 14 .5 billion lire concrete
statement piece in the 90s. To this 36 million
euro elevator equipped ceramic tracked spaceship
that we just saw on global television. It is
a truly remarkable evolution. And I think that
is the key takeaway for you to think about. We
often think of mountains and stadiums as these
permanent, unchangeable things. But the way we
interact with them is constantly shifting. The
Roll Pass jump died because. It couldn't adapt.
It couldn't handle the demands of a new world
of sport. But the Giuseppe Dolben Arena survived.
It survived because it reinvented itself. It
went from a geopolitical stage for a dying Yugoslavia
in 1991 to a high -tech Olympic venue in 2026.
It adapted to survive. And that leaves us with
our final thought for you today. Something to
mull over. When Dmytrovych was up in the air
for that 141 .5 -meter jump this month, he wasn't
just flying over snow and plastic mats. He was
flying over the ghosts of 1991. He was flying
over the invisible lines of old European borders
and the long legacy of Adamass. And he was setting
the bar for whatever comes next. Right. It makes
you wonder. 30 years from now, will they be renovating
this massive complex again? Will someone be jumping
155 meters? Or will this place eventually become
another ghost venue like Roll Pass, just quiet
and overgrown in the mountains? Only time and
gravity will tell. Well, for now, the lights
are off in Prodanso. The silence is back. But
what an incredible show it was. Thank you for
taking this deep dive with us today. Always a
pleasure.