Sometimes change comes to a sport and everything that happened before is rendered obsolete.
The forward pass recast football.The jump shot transformed basketball.
The changes are sudden, unsettling, irreversible. Old champions fade. New winners emerge.
Such is the current state of Olympic ski-jumping.
Instead of keeping their skis parallel beneath them, ski-jumpers now have the skis flared in a V shape. This technique allows the surface area of the chest as well as the skis to catch the wind, providing better lift and turning the jumpers into human kites.
The technique was developed accidentally in 1985 by Jan Bokloev, a Swedish jumper. Now the V is the rage. You can't win without it.
Matti Nykaenen, who won gold medals on the 70-meter and 90-meter hills and in the team competition at the 1988 Winter Olympics, has been overtaken by a 16-year-old ace, Toni Nieminen of Finland. Nieminen is the current World Cup leader.
The world's top three ski-jumpers are all teen-agers. At 26, Jim Holland of Norwich, Vt., the top U.S. jumper, is grandfatherly by comparison. But he has adapted the V technique to his jumps, grabbing a top-10 ranking on the World Cup circuit. He finished second at a meet in Thunder Bay, Ontario, and has an outside chance for a medal at Albertville. The United States has won only one Olympic ski-jumping medal, a bronze by Anders Haugen in 1924.
The Hollands are to ski-jumping what the Kennedys are to politics. Mike Holland, 30, jumped for the United States at the Calgary Games in 1988. Joe Holland, 27, another brother, will compete for the United States at Albertville in the nordic combined event, which involves ski-jumping and cross-country skiing. He finished 19th in the nordic combined at Calgary.
It's a wonder that Harry and Barbara Holland ever let their sons strap on skis and fling themselves off steep ramps like flying squirrels. If ever a sport had an image problem, ski-jumping does.
ABC's Wide World of Sports has forever conscripted ski-jumping to embody the agony of defeat. For decades on Saturday afternoons, the horrific sight of Slovenian jumper Vinko Bogataj has come into our living rooms like a human avalanche, Bogataj losing his nerve then his footing as he bounces off the jumping ramp in a tangled heap.
Jim Holland said he was willing to pursue the thrill of victory as a kid because he never saw the agony of defeat.
"I guess I never really watched it on television," he said. "It has discouraged a lot of mothers from letting their kids ski jump. And as some people know, he didn't really get hurt. It's a lot safer than it looks. You're not more than 10 or 12 feet off the ground."
Bogataj is an artist now, finding safer employment with his hands than his legs, but he still hangs around the ski-jumping circuit. When the World Cup comes to Slovenia, he can usually be found giving jumpers the green light in the start house.
"Your first jump, you're sky high and you look over and there's the agony of defeat," Holland laughed.
One face not found on the tour is the begoggled, often bruised Eddie "the Eagle" Edwards, who provided much comic relief at the 1988 Winter Olympics. Eddie the Eagle finished last on the hill but first on Johnny Carson's guest list. He was a plasterer from outside London who once lived in an insane asylum, not because he was crazy but because he got a room for cheap.
While Eddie the Eagle amused the rest of the world, he landed on his face one too many times to suit the British Olympic Committee. Qualifying standards were issued, standards that he could not meet.
The Eagle has had his swan song.
Just as well, according to Holland.
"He's a nice guy, but some of the things he does agitate me a little bit," Holland said. "It irritates me that he's just in it for the money. He's got an agent. He doesn't make appearances unless someone is paying him."
Holland will never receive the attention that Eddie the Eagle received. He knows that. What an odd sport when the worst jumpers are better known than the best. Money isn't the attraction for Americans, because there isn't any. Holland is intrigued by the physics of ski-jumping, and the freedom to float on air for the same amount of time and twice the distance as a punted football.
"I've heard people compare the takeoff to a golf swing," Holland said. "The smallest change in timing and position and movement can make a difference between a slice and a hook and straight down the fairway. You can duff it, but you can jump to the moon if you do it right."