Racing downhill at nearly 60 miles an hour, Ski Jumpers Casey Larson and Nina Lussi launch themselves hundreds of feet into the air. We talk ski jumping, the upcoming Olympics, groundhog hazards and why ski jumpers always put their hands out the car window. Then, we countdown the Top 5 Winter Activities.

Casey Larson and Nina Lussi: 01:27ish

Pointless: 24:57ish

Top 5: 43:20ish

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Interview with Nina Lussi and Casey Larson

Nick VinZant 0:12

Hey everybody, welcome to Profoundly Pointless. My name is Nick VinZant Coming up in this episode, ski jumping, and snow activities,

Nina Lussi 0:21

it's ski jumping is so beautiful because it's, I don't know, it's like the world turns off and you're just out there in the elements by by yourself.

Casey Larson 0:31

If you let go of the bar and you get in your interim position, you're going off that ski jump, whether you like it or not. And then once you let go, you got to be ready to handle whatever happens. So if the winds not right, you know, you trust your coach with your life

Nina Lussi 0:43

stand under the takeoff. And you can hear the rush of the skier coming down. And then you can, like, see them shoot right over your head and kind of start flying. Oh, man,

Casey Larson 0:55

well, sometimes you get bugs. And that's always a fun one. Like if you get a little like be splattered on your goggles. If you'd freak out a little bit.

Nick VinZant 1:02

I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance, like, download, subscribe, share, leave a review, we really appreciate it really helps us out. So our first guests are some of the best ski jumpers in the world. And right now they're getting ready to try to represent the United States at the Winter Olympics. This is Casey Larson. And Nina Lucy, did you set out to be a ski jumper? Or did this was this something that just happened?

Casey Larson 1:31

I mean, I started ski jumping when I was six years old started just kind of goofing around in the winters, it was a good way to like you know, in between t ball and you know, flag football season per se. But then pretty quickly, it took off into something a little bit bigger, for sure.

Nina Lussi 1:45

We could say that ski jumping found me. Now. I'm from Lake Placid, New York, we had the Winter Olympics in 1980, and 32. So grew up in an Olympic Village upon skis, so as on skiing by age three. And so my brother and I tried it together. And we're basically we're hockey ever since. So

Nick VinZant 2:06

what is it about it? What do you like about it,

Nina Lussi 2:08

it's scheduling is so beautiful, because it's, you have to find the edge of like, risk, but also control and when you're in it, time slows down and you're you can feel the air and you can this like, I don't know, it's like the world turns off, and you're just out there, in the elements by by yourself.

Casey Larson 2:30

Do it was the one thing that I wasn't just, I didn't naturally pick up very well. I didn't naturally pick up this like, you know, golf esque, like super technical sport very easily it was it was kind of tough for me. And then it just became this like addiction to just try and make sure I could, you know, I could bring my arms in, or I could be more aerodynamic or I could do all these things. And, you know, I really didn't realize how much I liked, you know, kind of diving into that, that that side of the sport until like high school. And even after high school,

Nick VinZant 2:57

watching it on TV, I can never decide if this is a simple sport, that's just go down a hill and jump. Or if there's something that's really technical about it, and I don't see it.

Casey Larson 3:09

I call I mean, I call it an extreme version of golf in that sense. Like you can apply like, you know, the amount of video watching and the amount of you know, you know, technical analysis, the amount of just overall, like contorting your body is very similar to golf. I mean, in the sense of you just have to hit this tiny little thing in a 250 yards. Whereas a ski jumper, you have to just you are the ball, right? You are trying to, you know, take off so perfectly. And so my Newton, the differences are so small that you just got to it's very applicable in that sense to the slumps and the highs and the lows of those two sports where sometimes you're feeling it sometimes the rhythms there. And then other days, it's definitely not.

Nick VinZant 3:48

So what are you trying to do? Are you trying to go faster into the jump? Are you trying to time the jump, right? Is it when you're in the air? Like what's the what's what's the goal there?

Nina Lussi 4:01

The takeoff portion is pretty critical the speed. It's a designated start spot for everybody. So yeah, I mean, we spent time working on how to keep your skis super straight and super like in the middle of the tracks, so there's less friction and so that you're going as fast as possible and obviously wax and everything. But the takeoff portion is the simple move from like the Enron position, like the squat type thing into the air, and that's where you're propelling yourself into the flight. And if you can do that, you want to put as much power down onto like down on the on the takeoff, but also move yourself kind of project yourself forward out over your skis. So that's really important and so that the timing aspect of that and the force that you're putting down, but also you don't want to be super powerful and like use a lot of muscle and then you're shooting too far up and then your skis are coming at you. So then, so you need to shoot yourself out basically perfectly and reduce the amount of drag. And then when you're in the air, you're trying to surf right above the air and kind of pull away from the hill, because the takeoff is actually shooting you down. So it's at minus 12 degrees. So it's not launching you up.

Nick VinZant 5:23

It's pointed, I never noticed that it's pointed. I just, it's not a ramp, is it?

Nina Lussi 5:29

No. And that's what everyone thinks they think it's like shooting you straight up. It's actually shooting you at the ground.

Nick VinZant 5:35

Do you just like, changed my entire perception of ski jumping my entire? I always thought that like, oh, yeah, there's a little ramp on the end. And then they go up like they try to jump off the ramp.

Nina Lussi 5:45

With the takeoff with the takeoff power, you're going up because you're, you're literally jumping off the ground. So then, so then you're coming up like that, but you're creating that you're not using, you're not using the the jump.

Nick VinZant 6:00

Yeah, and anybody who's ever like tried to run downhill and jump off of a downhill. That's way more complicated than kind of jumping off flat ground or like jumping off of an uphill.

Casey Larson 6:11

Yeah, I haven't thought about that. But yeah, where you would want to jump forward, but still down to that you can kind of keep your speed going

Nick VinZant 6:20

from when you kind of jump to when you land. How long How far are we talking

Casey Larson 6:27

250 meters through the air. It's that's that's the world record in my I've gone 216 and a half meters on the same day, the world record set. So my my personal best was out shine for sure. But 216 meters, that's still almost 230 yards, 240 yards,

Nick VinZant 6:44

you're still talking like a couple of city blocks. When you're flying over a couple of city blocks where

Casey Larson 6:49

you're, you're flying over. You're flying from UC takeoff through one goalpost. And then you go through two more goalposts and then you land at the 50 yard line, right?

Nick VinZant 7:03

That's insane when you think about it that way that you're essentially flying over two and a half football fields. Okay, this is my armchair analysis of it. So watching it like all right, you jump right at the end, right? Like, how hard is that? Why is it difficult not to like jump at the right time, every time.

Casey Larson 7:22

I don't know I'm in trying to figure that out for like 10 years now. And I still have it. So I think that's my biggest issue is just like why why I always you know, timing is the probably the biggest one just like that take off the minute like bringing your chest up a little bit, or just not getting all the power down, whether that be in your shin it like just not being in the correct position, I'm not putting 100% of the power that you possibly can put down down and getting into that aerodynamic position, you're going to be you're just screwed right off the bat. So you really can't bring your chest up at all, you really got to just stay low, and then just use your legs and go. And at the end of the day, it is a simple sport. And that's kind of the thing is, the older you get, the easier it looks. And that's the whole point of sport is those professionals, the guys that are winning the Olympics, and even me sometimes I make it look really easy. Whereas and that's the whole point of the sport is, is I think I want people to say that I want people to think it's an easy sport, because if they're watching me when they say that, that just means I'm doing it right.

Nick VinZant 8:20

When you kind of actually get into the air, what are you trying to do once you're in the air,

Casey Larson 8:25

that's like, what makes a good ski jumper good is like when he gets in the air when she's in the air. You just kind of naturally note to do. You're trying to, you know, extend and pull away from the hill and just kind of, you know, glide on that cushion of air that you've created for yourself. And are you

Nick VinZant 8:39

like you're trying to achieve a certain like angle though, and things like that, right? Yes,

Casey Larson 8:44

like, it's when you're driving on the highway later today. Or, you know, if you're in your car, pop the window open and stick your hand out. And you'll notice like, if you have it down here, it's gonna dive straight into the ground. If you bring it up here, your hands going to go back to the back of the window. But then you're going to find this little happy medium where your hand just wants to go straight up. And that's the body position we're trying to find with our skis and our body. We're just trying to be not too far aerodynamic, but not also not too far back. Just something where that wiggle just bring us right up

Nick VinZant 9:13

is a great analogy, honestly, like I perfectly understand it right now. Like oh, no, he's correct. So does that mean like you spend a lot of time in car rides? Sticking your hand out the window?

Casey Larson 9:24

Definitely. Yeah. Even Even today, even when it's like 25 degrees out in Park City. Oh,

Nick VinZant 9:30

just to test it out, just to get a feel for it. What kind of like when you when you look at your training, like what kind of training are you generally doing for it

Nina Lussi 9:38

depends on the time of year. So the spring we're usually we're improving our general aerobic capacity, so a lot more of running and that kind of thing. So that's like basic stretching follows you through the whole year. A lot of core falls you through the whole year. Try to build up more muscle with it. squats in that type of thing more in the summer. And then in the winter, less reps, but still high weight to keep the strength. A lot of hurdles coordination, so ladders balance slacklining. Generally, also some things like we do usually two days of in the summer of wakesurfing. So you like, have a nice feeling of where how your feet are moving into kind of, because in in jumping, you need to, like feel the balance and like, be able to be soft without like sub you can, if there are different conditions on the snow, if it's like gets really slow. If you're like super rigid in your position that'll throw you off. But if you can absorb it, then that's that's really important.

Nick VinZant 10:49

So okay, how much control do you have to have if you're coming up to it? And I'm a big kind of math numbers person. So Right. So imagine that you're going down there and you could give 100% Everything you've got into the jump? Can you do it that way? Or do you have to kind of hold back a little bit so that you can land this thing?

Nina Lussi 11:10

Well, you're it's not really an explosive movement. It's like, like a tennis swing or something. Like if you try to really like slam it, it's not going to be as efficient as if you do a really long, smooth, but also a strong stroke. And so that's basically what we're trying to do. So that your best jumps don't feel like you're trying that hard. But you're just maximizing the the output by using like, one time this one coach told me that in ski jumping, you want to use as little like as few muscles as possible. And I was like, like, What do you mean, he was like, well, all the extra stuff that you're adding, that's like that's not helping you. He's like, it's like I'm in orchestra when you can hear them playing. And it sounds like one, one voice and you hear them and it's perfect. But some of like, at a lower level. You can hear all the separate instruments and they aren't exactly in tune. And so that's when the other the extra muscles are involved. So when you can get everything into that one singular sound that is when things are like ideal.

Nick VinZant 12:20

Are you ready for some harder slash listener submitted questions? Sure, let's get to it. Strangest thought you've ever had while in the air.

Casey Larson 12:28

Oh man, well sometimes hit bugs. And that's always a fun one. Like if you get a little like be splattered on your goggles if you'd freak out a little bit. But I will say when I was a little kid, I do remember letting go of the bar on a smaller Hill. So I was totally okay. But I remember being like I didn't put my bindings in. And the way the ski jumping boot works is you kind of slam this little, this little piece of plastic into the back of the booth that allows your your heel to come off the ski a little bit. I was like I didn't put that in. So I remember jumping into the air and just wanting you. And it was it was the most scared I've ever been in my life. It was It was wild. I felt like I was I was okay. Thankfully, you know, you get learnt you learn how to falls at a young age, you definitely make enough mistakes where you can fall safely. Basically just keep your knees straight in the air and you're going to be totally fine. Your body's gonna stay relatively straight. But I was I was freaking out.

Nina Lussi 13:21

I mean, one time there was there was like a little there was a groundhog that was running across the land and kale and I could see it below me while it was flying. So I thought, Oh, I hope I don't hit that.

Nick VinZant 13:37

Will you sometimes like jump and kind of veer off to one side or veer off to one side in the air? Or do you pretty much just go straight?

Casey Larson 13:46

Well, your body's never symmetric. But you also naturally want to go straight. So you find these ways to correct so mice, my skis are never symmetrical, but I go straight, if that makes sense. But obviously wind whatever conditions whatever it may be, you end up having some gems where you go to one side more or less, but those hills are massive, allow for like a pretty big amount of play. So you're never too worried about like, you know, landing on the other mining in the grass or landing, you know, off the hill. But yeah, you you learn how to deal with it and you end up if you do it enough times, you're not gonna get too scared by it. So you end up not just knowing how to deal with it, I guess,

Nick VinZant 14:18

for my kind of understanding, so imagine like zero is completely straight. How much will you drift to one side? Are we talking like five meters? 10 meters like, oh, you I've seen a guy drift like 30 meters to one side. Yeah,

Casey Larson 14:34

I mean, there's definitely athletes that are known for it. And we say the winds the winds better on the right side of the hill. So you go to the right side of the hill. That's not true. But you see some athletes just do it. And they're totally fine. And then they have a play of like, you know, 1015 meters so those hills really big into landing Hill. See, they're allowed to do it and they're totally fine. They end up being you know, they're nothing, you know, changes but at the end of the day, I always think like, well, that's just extra meters. I could be flying straight but I'm not flying to the right, you know, so I just think like the straighter the better. But obviously there's there's athletes out there that break those rules and you know winning competitions doing it,

Nick VinZant 15:09

how far up above where you jump is where you usually land. Yeah, the hills

Casey Larson 15:15

are steep. So you're definitely not like flying across flat ground. It's not like water ski jumping that you might have seen on TV where it's like they're they're just flying across the water and then landing completely flat, we have this big hill, we're able to kind of coast on and coast down. So that's why we're able to land so far. That's why we're able to like be relatively safe at the same time to you know, knock on wood. Injuries are pretty limited in ski jumping, obviously, some knee, see some knee injuries and stuff like that. But for the most part, the impact is super low. The only the only sport at the Olympics, it's safe within ski jumping at that level is curling. But yeah, that's kind of why it's so safe, because we're just following the super steep hill just kind of flying along it. And then it does start to flatten out at some point. And that's called the K point, that's when I refer to the size of the hills like the K 10k 20. That just means the hill flattens out at 120 meters. And then after that, I see your mark, you have to go past that if you want to win a competition going past the k points just kind of proven, you're able to break physics, right? You're, you're kind of you're good enough athlete that you're able to just go past that point in fly and fly past that, that flat portion of it of the hill.

Nick VinZant 16:22

So what you're landing on flat ground Are you landing on the slower,

Casey Larson 16:25

it's such a gradual decline in terms of the rate, the radius is so long and so big on any Hill, that even if you go past the point where it starts to flatten out, you're still landing on pretty steep ground.

Nick VinZant 16:36

Oh, I see what you're saying. Right. So like there's the steep part, there's the k point and then there's the kind of steep part basically. Okay, that makes sense to me. Have you ever backed off of one

Casey Larson 16:46

you really can't right so you're in these when you let go this bar right when you hop on a ski jump and getting get ready to go. If you let go of the bar and you get your interim position, you're going off that ski jump whether you like it or not. And you just have the ritual that you trust that you can never second guess right you check your bindings you check your equipment, you check your goggles to get on the bar, you can do it again. And then once you let go you got to be ready to handle whatever happens so if the winds not right, you know, you trust your coach with your life pretty much is how it works. So if your coach lives a you know that everything say everything's gonna be totally fine. I just got to do my job.

Nick VinZant 17:25

Well, when you go though, okay, so we talked to a freestyle Cliff jumper who said that, like, look, every time I go, I'm still scared. Are you still scared every time you do it? Or it's just like, it's Tuesday, man, I've done this 1000s of times.

Casey Larson 17:38

I don't think I don't think I'd still do it if I wasn't still scared. I think the adrenaline and just that little pickup is what keeps you honest and what keeps you focused. So for me, I've never been a daredevil I've never like even when I was a kid and moved up to a bigger hill I took me so long ago to actually like, go and actually deal with it. I was never as fearless little kid.

Nina Lussi 17:57

It's not super like it's not like every jump. I'm like, oh my god, what am I doing? But it is still like every once in a while you will get up there and you're like, either if it's windy or new hill or some something's weird. You're like, oh, this is no, this is serious. Like, I need to like, know what I'm doing like, this isn't a joke.

Nick VinZant 18:22

Okay, ask you this question. Have you ever thought of flapping your arms to potentially go far farther during the ski jump?

Casey Larson 18:33

Oh, man, when people try there's you know, there's like nervous twitches athletes have but I'll throw my teammate under the bus coming back now. Um, if you look at some videos of him up, he flaps his arms pretty bad. But it doesn't add anything. I think it's just a, I think I think it's just a twitch. I don't really know why people end up moving their hands or moving their arms a little bit more than others. But I usually pray stay pretty stuck in the air and don't move too much. But But hey, you know, maybe I'll try it. I don't know.

Nina Lussi 19:03

I appreciate I definitely appreciate the advice insight. I have, like, this was last week, and I was trying to find I was training. So I'm like trying to get ready for the Olympic season. And I'm trying to find exactly how far away from my body my arms are. So like, I was having them probably like three inches away from my side so that I could maximize the surface area. Because that was like enough like the dry like it wouldn't the air wouldn't kind of come between my arm and my body. So just kind of like get a little bit bigger. But I wasn't feeling as much as I wanted to. So then, while I was flying, I was like moving my arms in and out, like looking for the perfect surface and my coach was like, What are you doing? And I was like, I just wanted to like, maximize what I could do and he was like, okay, all right.

Nick VinZant 20:00

Okay. So they kind of sounds like the answer is yes.

Nina Lussi 20:09

We want yeah, you want to know exactly where to, to be in to keep it in that position. So you can kind of,

Nick VinZant 20:16

can you make it? Can you? Can this be a full time living?

Casey Larson 20:20

Yeah, it isn't at this point. Definitely not. I mean, even as an Olympic athlete, you know, obviously trying to make another one, it's certainly not a full time living, it's not something I can, you know, maintain for another four or five years without getting a lot better at the sport. But if you're top, I'd say Top 10 Top 20. Um, if you're on the World Cup circuit consistently, and you're consistently getting like top 30 results, you're able to do okay, you're able to get the sponsors that like watching it. It's the biggest winter sport in Europe. I mean, viewership wise.

Nick VinZant 20:52

So how big is it overseas?

Casey Larson 20:54

Mass, I'd say it's, we fight with, there's so many disciplines inside of ski racing. And there's only one discipline in ski jumping. So that's kind of how we cheat the viewership numbers. If that makes sense. We fill up stadiums pretty pretty much on the regular before COVID with 40,000 people.

Nick VinZant 21:10

Well, how come that hasn't like, Well, why not in the US, right? Like, how come that hasn't hit here?

Casey Larson 21:15

I don't know. I really don't know when you know, as it's definitely better in person, right? Better than it could ever be on TV. Ski jumping in person is pretty pretty darn cool. You get you don't get a little bit more respect for just how absolutely insane it is and how far these athletes are going.

Nick VinZant 21:30

would if I was to show up to like an event. Would I be shocked at how steep and big things are? Or what I look at and be like, ah, that's not as that's not as steep as I thought it was seeing it on TV.

Casey Larson 21:43

I think you'd be more impressed in person. Honestly, I think I think a TV does it some justice, but not enough justice.

Nina Lussi 21:50

I think the best way to see ski jumping is to get as close to the action as possible. Live, of course. So if you one cool thing is if you're obviously not everybody can do this. But if you stand under the takeoff, and you can hear the rush of the skier coming down. And then you can like, see them shoot right over your head and kind of start flying. And where you can see this you can feel the speed and then also when you're in the air, it makes this cool like I don't know, it's a really special sound because you are almost like an airplane so you can hear the the air on on this gear. But on TV, you can't really like that. Those sensations don't really come through.

Nick VinZant 22:36

Who's kind of that like who's the Michael Jordan of ski jumping.

Nina Lussi 22:41

I mean, this girl, Sara Takanashi, the Japanese girl has been like really good for a really long time. There was also a Japanese guy named Noriaki kosai, who was one of the oldest jumpers, and he actually, like transitioned through every different ski jumping style. So he actually used to jump in old style where your skis are like straight. And then he did the V and like has gone to, I don't know, five or six Olympics. Wow, like still competitive got a medal in? Yeah. But that's very rare and like you have to have a body that can sustain that.

Nick VinZant 23:23

Is there is there a country that like oh, here comes the Bulgarians or whatever. Is there a country that dominates?

Casey Larson 23:31

Yeah, the power of the power? The power countries are definitely Norway. Poland, Austria, Germany. Finland is up there. Scandinavian countries are big.

Nick VinZant 23:45

Oh, this is the last one best ski jumping seen in a movie or TV show.

Nina Lussi 23:50

There was like the Eddie the Eagle movie that came out a few years ago. That wasn't like super cool ski jumping. You know what's cool is like, I was training in Slovenia before and two of the guys I was training with they were like stunt double. So they had to learn how to like jump bad to be in the movie. And they like went to the premiere and stuff. So that was cool. So they liked it. But

Nick VinZant 24:21

how do you jump bad? And still, like not get seriously injured?

Nina Lussi 24:29

Yeah, that's the thing is it's like totally about the body awareness and being able to control exactly what you're doing. And so