Ski-jumping centre - Frenštát pod Radhoštem, Czech Republic
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puczmeloun
N 49° 32.384 E 018° 11.845
34U E 297248 N 5491232
Skokanský areál Jirího Rašky // Ski-jumping centre
Waymark Code: WMHK4X
Location: Moravskoslezský kraj, Czechia
Date Posted: 07/18/2013
Views: 55
"Ski-jumping centre
Frenštát p. R. and its neighbourhood, the Radhošt Beskyds, are a traditional area for winter sports in the Czech Republic. The beginnings of organised skiing in the Beskyds date from around 1910 and are closely connected with the activities of the Pohorská Jednota Radhošt, the Club of Czech Tourists and the Association of Skiers.
German officials from Moravian Ostrava were the first to ski here, having learned the art of the sport in the Alps. Later – sometime between 1912 and 1914 – the first Sunday skiing courses were organised for advanced skiers.
WWI put a stop to the development of skiing as a sport, and the boom started again only after the war. Many skiing tracks, slopes, slalom courses, toboggan tracks and ski jump were built in the Beskyds at the time. In 1940 the chair lift from Ráztoka to Pustevny – first of its kind in Central Europe – started running. The Beskyds were becoming a popular skiing centre, and many important sport events took place there, including ski championships and international races.
The most successful period of downhill skiing in Frenštát dates to the early fifties and is connected with the names of Zdenek and Ludmila Parma and František Pitucha.
The most famous cross-country race, which has been organised each year since 1949, is the Memorial Race of Jan Šrubar – a skier who fell a victim to the anti-fascist fight.
Cross-country skiing was most successful in the seventies thanks to Karel Sacký and Miroslava Jaškovská.
Ski-jumping has been the most successful skiing discipline since the late sixties. Frenštát can pride itself with the Olympic winner and world champion Jirí Raška. His achievements gave impulse to creating a ski-jumping centre with an artificial surface on the slopes of the Horecky Hills.
It took just 40 days after Raška´s triumph at the X Olympic Games in Grenoble (1968) to build the ski-jump with break point K=42. In the same year the construction of two more jumps (P=72 and K=90) started. All the three jumps were designed by Josef Zita. By 1973 the whole complex including a car park and evening lighting was completed. The K=90 ski-jump was the first one of this size in the world covered with an artificial surface.
Every year there are several competitions with the world’s top jumpers taking part there.
Frenštát skiers make good use of the ski-jumping complex especially for training young jumpers. In the 1990´s the Frenštát sports association, TJ, set up the Training Centre"
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