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| THE JUMPS IN SOCHI. After some crazy travel, Clint Jones felt fortunate to arrive in one piece. |
CLINT JONES
Age 30
Steamboat Winter Sports Club
Park City, UT
skifli60@gmail.com
Air Sochi
Over the last 17 years, I have spent more than my fair share
of time on planes. It goes without
saying that I have seen some bad weather, delays, angry passengers, and even
bomb threats. The craziest situation
that I can remember from all of those years of traveling was probably in
December of 2013, when we were traveling to Sochi for the pre-Olympic test
event.
At the time, the team for the trip consisted of Anders
Johnson, Peter Frenette, and yours truly as the coach... All of whom were
rookies to Russia. There had been stories circulating around the ski jumping
community that it was not that great of an idea to travel through Moscow
because the airport staff was notorious for loosing skis. To solve this problem, FIS took it upon
themselves to book a charter flight for all of the World Cup athletes and staff
to avoid any issues during travel.
Little did they know, Mother Nature had other plans…
When we woke up in Zurich the morning of our direct flight
to Sochi, it was a complete blizzard. We
arrived at the airport without any issues, and then began to follow our less
than clear directions to drop off all of our luggage at an unfortunately well-hidden
location outside the airport. After
dragging our bags around in the snow, we finally got them checked in and made
our way to the gate. We arrived at the
plane, and quickly boarded to a very interesting scene. The back 10 rows were without seats. In their place, the ski and wax equipment for
all the teams were stacked high. The
rest of the plane was full of the who’s who of both men’s and women’s ski
jumping. After a pre-flight briefing,
all in Russian, the Baltic Holliday 737 pushed back from the gate.
The normal procedure with four inches of snow on the wings
is to proceed directly to the de-icing area.
However, after taxiing for a few minutes, we made a left turn on to the
runway. I was a little confused when the
pilot pushed the throttle all the forward, and we started speeding down the
runway. I am still not positive if it
was only to try and get rid of the extra snow on the wings, but we continued on
the ground almost the entire length of the runway, gaining speed the whole
way. I don’t know how fast we were
going, but I have never been so fast on the ground. Just before the end of the runway, we finally
took off without a problem, even with the extra snow still on the wings. The
next few hours of the flight were completely normal, except for the 120 or so
top level ski jumpers mingling around.
As we reached the eastern side of the Black Sea, things
started to get interesting. It was
almost completely dark out, but you could just make out some storm clouds
ahead. Another 30 minutes later, the air
became turbulent. This was just in time
for our final approach into Sochi. The
pilot came over the intercom and said something in Russian. I jokingly looked over at Ander and
translated, “Prepare for our crash landing in Sochi!...” Almost immediately, I saw a bright white
flash, and an immediate bang. The lights
flickered and the plane shook. My first
thought was that one of the engines had exploded. After a few seconds, the lights were back on
and the plane seemed to be cruising along without any problems. Everyone on the plane was looking at each
other and trying to figure out what had happened. After 30 seconds, there was another white
flash and a bang. At this point,
everyone was quite startled, especially because of the lack of information
coming from the flight crew. There
seemed to be no problems with the plane, and at that point, we realized that
the plane had just been struck by lightning.
Finally, the pilot came over the intercom and said in a totally unfazed
voice, “Please Prepare for landing In Sochi.”
The flaps went down, and the pilot guided us in for a nice, smooth touch
down.
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| CLINT JONES competed in the 2002 and 2006 Olympics and is now the head coach for USASJ. |
Editor's notes
Clint Jones is a two-time Olympian and one of the USA's best-ever ski jumpers. On the other side of the walkie talkie he has evolved into one of the most respected coaches on the World Cup tour. USASJ is very fortunate to have him as the top team's head coach.
To see Clint's FIS bio, click here
To see Clint jump over 175m at Planica (with a telemark!), click here
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