Popularity
Ski jumping is popular among spectators and TV audiences in Scandinavia and Central Europe. Almost all world-class ski jumpers come from those regions or from Japan. Traditionally, the strongest countries are Finland, Norway, Germany, Austria, Poland, Switzerland, Slovenia, and Japan. However, there have always been successful ski jumpers from other countries as well (see list below). The Four Hills Tournament, held annually at four sites in Bavaria, Germany and Austria around New Year's, is very popular.
There have been attempts to spread the popularity of the sport by finding ways by which the construction and upkeep of practicing and competition venues can be made easier. These include plastic fake snow to provide a slippery surface even during the summer time and in locations where snow is a rare occurrence.
Read more about this topic: Ski Jumping
Famous quotes containing the word popularity:
“There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)
“Here also was made the novelty ‘Chestnut Bell’ which enjoyed unusual popularity during the gay nineties when every dandy jauntily wore one of the tiny bells on the lapel of his coat, and rang it whenever a story-teller offered a ‘chestnut.’”
—Administration for the State of Con, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“The popularity of disaster movies ... expresses a collective perception of a world threatened by irresistible and unforeseen forces which nevertheless are thwarted at the last moment. Their thinly veiled symbolic meaning might be translated thus: We are innocent of wrongdoing. We are attacked by unforeseeable forces come to harm us. We are, thus, innocent even of negligence. Though those forces are insuperable, chance will come to our aid and we shall emerge victorious.”
—David Mamet (b. 1947)