10. Lyžařské můstky v Novém Městě
SKI JUMPING HILLS IN NOVÉ MĚSTO NA MORAVĚ
You are at a place, which the locals call Obora. In the past, the steep hills offered great conditions for skiing activities.
The main sporting site during the First Republic was a jumping hill made of snow at the edge of the Obora forest (where the Hájkova street now begins), where you could jump 10 – 12 meters. However, a much bigger jumping hill could be found in the middle of the Obora forest, where the distance jumped neared 15 meters.
The first jumping hill not made of snow was built at Šibenice hill (near the current Medin factory). This hill had a minimalistic structure and was made of trestle support, planks and snow. The first competition was held on 28 January 1912. A year later the hill hosted its first international competition. A Norwegian ski instructor and a first lieutenant Ingwald Smith Kielland won the race, with Karel Jarolímek, who later designed the ski jumping hills in Nové Město na Moravě, coming in second place.
The first jumping hill with an inrun was built in 1923 in a part of the city called “V Trni” at “Prášilova mez”. The distance jumped there did not exceed 25 meters. The jumping hill was unique in that it was built on a fertile field, so the inrun tower had to be taken apart every summer.
The first jumping hill with an inrun was built in 1923 in a part of the city called “V Trni” at “Prášilova mez”. The distance jumped there did not exceed 25 meters. The jumping hill was unique in that it was built on a fertile field, so the inrun tower had to be taken apart every summer.
A bigger jumping hill with a wooden inrun structure was built during 1924 – 25 at “Na Šibenici”. The hill was profiled by Ing. Karel Mrkvička and designed and built by the architect František Šmída. In January 1926, an international Czechoslovak Championship was held here. The wooden jumping hill “Na Šibenici” was rebuilt many times, with the last reconstruction done in 1954 based on a design by Mirko Tulis.
In 1937 brothers Cyril and Bohuslav Musil, with the help of the Sports Club, built a wooden jumping hill near Studnice north of Nové Město. Its landing zone was on a calcite mine wall and the outrun ran to the bottom of the mine to a small frozen pond. It was destroyed in 1949.
After the war, a new jumping hill with a K-point over 50 meters was built near a starch plant. The grand opening of the jumping hill took place in 1949 during the race for the Golden Ski of the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands. Being the largest jumping hill in the Republic, it became the pride of the skiers of Nové Město na Moravě.
Cross country races and “Sausage races” (a race in which all of the contestants get sausages as a reward for finishing the race) were organized on the fields along the Obora forest in the 1950s and 1960s. Starting at the town square the course went through the Obora forest to the Three Crosses and then back to the city through the Brněnská street. Since 1955 a training site could be found by the Bezděčka stream – a 150 meters long ski track, made of a knurled foil attached to planks, used for skiing in the summer.
In 1950 another jumping hill was built in the Obora forest in the stead of a snow one, which used to be there before. The profile was designed by the architect Karel Jarolímek. In the autumn of 1950, a wooden structure of the inrun, about 8 meters high, made of logs was built. It was built in a matter of days by soldiers directed by a carpenter, František Sklenář, from Olešná. The jumping hill featured a jury tower, and a year later artificial lighting was added. The snow came early that year, so the first evening competition could be held as early as on 15 November.
In May 1958, the jumping hill in the Obora forest was destroyed by a strong wind, on the same day as the jumping hill near the starch plant.
The jumping hill near the starch plant was not repaired until 1963. The monumental steel structure was made at the Žďas factory. In 1964 and 1965 the competitions hosted at the jumping hill near the starch plant were won by Jiří Raška, an Olympic Champion and an Honoured Master of Sports. The record of the hill was set by Josef Kraus with the distance of 73 meters. Several years later the competitions had to be stopped due to strong wind and a lack of snow. The jumping hill was closed in 1983.
A new jumping hill was built in 1971 at Bělisko as a replacement of that at Obora. Ing. J. Dokoupil, the author of the design of the jumping hill near the starch plant, designed also the inrun tower and its structure for the new jumping hill. The construction was carried out by the Road Research Institute of Nové Město na Moravě. The jumping hill hosted junior competitions. Next to the regular hill, a smaller hill for junior contestants was built in 1977, based on a design by Jiří Slonek, who also designed a new jumping hill with a metal tower “Na Šibenici”. A now abandoned jumping hill, where successful local ski jumpers used to train – Olympic athletes Vojtěch Štursa and Viktor Polášek, Junior World Champion Miloš Kadlec and a medallist from the Nordic Combined Junior World Championship, Jiří Hradil. The smaller jumping hill was repaired in 2018 to serve as a training site.
Author: JS, AH