Ski jumpers' Olympic hopes soar

High-tech base

Helping Chinese ski jumpers fly further is a new training base in Laiyuan, Hebei province, which features two jumping hills and a wind tunnel lab.

As the country's first purpose-built wind tunnel for ski jumping performance evaluation, the Laiyuan lab is the world's biggest of its kind, generating wind gusts as fast as 50 meters per second－stronger than a typical hurricane－in three directions.

The speed and intensity of the air flow meet the requirements of all winter sports that are scored by speed, time and distance.

The tunnel is particularly helpful for ski jumpers, who need to adjust their takeoff angle, air posture and outfits to maximize aerodynamic performance.

"The biggest advantage of training in the tunnel is that we can instantly feel the differences of various body postures against the flow and adjust accordingly," said Song, who set a national men's record of 141.5 meters from a training jump off the large hill at the Laiyuan base in January.

"Training at the wind tunnel for three minutes, you can do the amount of repetitions that would take days on an actual hill. It's quite efficient and saves a lot of time," Song added.

China's men's ski jumpers have returned to the Laiyuan base for their final training camp before the Games open on Feb 4, while the women's team is training in Slovenia for its final World Cup leg at Ljubno (Dec 30-Jan 1).

Following in the footsteps of the retired Chang, who finished 20th at the 2018 Olympics, veteran Dong Bing and teenager Peng Qingyue are hoping to land further breakthroughs in women's normal hill, the only individual female ski jumping discipline at the Olympics.