Vikersund is a small village at Tyrifjorden 80 km north of Norway’s capitol Oslo. Since the foundation of Vikersund IF in 1894 until 1935 the ski club had been hosting its ski jumping competitions on six different ski jumping hills. In 1984 a committee was announced, whose target was to find a well located hill for a new ski jump near Vikersund. This new ski jumping hill, which was opened with a 86 meter jump of Reidar Andersen, was inaugurated in February 1936. This ski jump has been enlarged twice since its early days, at first in 1956, after that in 1964/65 into a ski flying hill, after a long and hard fight over the status as Norway’s ski flying hill with Rena IL at Østerdalen. In March 1966 the new ski flying hill was inaugurated and Bjørn Wirkola’s new world record lighted through the whole skiing world. Later on the flying hill was converted several times, but the wind conditions at Vikersundbakken always made many problems during flying competitions.
The last conversion of the ski flying hill took place for ski flying world championships in 2000, when it was enlarged into a complete K185 profiled hill, on which one can jump up to 220 meters. Although Sven Hannawald fell at 214 meters in 2000, he became world champion. The potentials of Vikersund were demonstrated during the first COC ski flying in 2004, when Austria’s Roland Müller flew up on 219 meters. This new hill record was unique, but Roland Müller even announced that it would be possible to jump even some meters longer. Then in 2004/2005 a project of a new ski flying hill at Rødkleiva near Oslo was published and Vikersund had serious doubts whether it will still be Norway’s national ski flying facility. But these plans were temporarily put on hold and at World Cup Ski Flying 2007 Austria’s Martin Koch even landed on 220.5 m during training, but couldn’t stand. The ski jumping facility of Vikersund doesn’t only consist of the ski flying hill HS 207, there is a big hill ski jump K105 (HS 117) too, which regularly hosts Continental Cup competitions of men and women, as well as pupils and training hills K65, K45, K25, K15, K10.
In April 2010 the conversion of ski flying hill HS 207 into HS 225 was started, by increasing the difference of height up to 135 m. Total investment cost is 80 mill. NOK (about 10.2 mill. Euros), half of which was covered by the state. Old construction of inrun was blown up, and on its place new inrun was made of concrete and steel; all hills were slightly rotated.
In February 2011 Vikersund was the host of World Ski Flying Championship Trial, before the SFCH in 2012. Notech As, located in Sandefjord, Norway together with its daughter company Notech Industrial Services Srl, located in Bucharest, Romania designed, manufactured and placed onsite at Vikersund the metallic infrastructure of the new sky jumping. The engineering is 100% Norwegian and the production was done at the facilities from Sandefjord. Here the team was made from Norwegian and Romanian skilled personnel. Bjoern Einar Romøren thinks that a new ski flying world record, over 240 m, will be set in the upcoming winter. After he looked through the plans for the construction of the new flying hill in Vikersund, Romøren, who is the record holder with 239 m right now, believes that jumps over 240 m will be possible there. For additional info you can check the website: www.vikersund.no.