Seems like almost every month I have more grey news to pass on.
If you didn't know about this it's an interesting read:
Olympic ski jump in Garmisch Partenkirchen was blasted on April 14th
Less than 2 pounds of explosives are supposed to make 125 tons of steel collapse: On Saturday past Easter, when chief blaster Michael Schneider gives the order, a total of 28 explosive charges will end the existance of the olympic ski jump in Garmisch Partenkirchen within a split second. Inrun and jumping tower are expected to collapse like a pocket rule.
The official time of detonation for the large hill (K 125), which is venue for the New Years ski jump event during the Four Hills Tournament since 1951, was scheduled for Saturday 14th, 2:30 p.m.
In the course of the detonation not only the 120 feet tall complex with start tower and take-off platform built in 1950, but also the old judges tower to the right of the ski jump will be blasted in front of the eyes of ski German ski jumping head coach Peter Rohwein and former ski jumper Dieter Thoma.
The judges tower will be fired first, shortly prior to the ski jump. The danger zone of the explosion will be widely secured by personnel of the Technisches Hilfswerk, the fire brigade, mountain rescue service, police and other support forces. Starting Friday, April 13th, the sensitive areas of the ski stadium will be inaccessible for the public.
The explosive used is a so called linear cutter that consists of the highly explosive Hexagon.
„Nearly 400 hours of work were used for the preparation of the detonation“, states Ulrich Ihring, chief of project of the working group Nagelschneider and Penzenstadler from Munich, commissioned by the Marktgemeinde Garmisch Partenkirchen to do the demolition of the old ski jump. For Michael Schneider, chief blaster of the demolition company from Thüringen, the blasting of the ski jump is a premiere. „Although we do blasting operations on an average every day of the year - and we do have some high lights like recently a 300 feet tall skyscraper within a living area in Hagen, a 900 feet tall reinforced concrete chimney or a large powerstation building - but so far we never had a ski jump“.
By means of a detailled concept of detonation the fall of the ski jump has been exactly calculated by the participants of the project. „We do not have a big margin, because 90 feet away from the large hill there is a lift and some feet further there is the normal hill of Garmisch Partenkirchen. Of course both may not be damaged by the explosion“, Schneider explains.
According to the demolition specialists they plan on blasting a so called „blow up muzzle“ into the juncture of the beginning of the start and the far end of the tower, virtually folding up the tower and the start.
Markus Gehrle-Neff, member of the department of planning and building inspection of the Markt Garmisch Partenkirchen and chief of project for the new construction of the large hill, declares, that right after the demolition of the old installation the work for the new one will begin. „We will start digging as planned on April 24th.“ Already at the New Year’s ski jumping event in 2008 world-cup overall winner Adam Malysz (Poland) and his colleagues will take off from the new large hill in Garmisch Partenkirchen, that will be one of the most modern of the international ski jumping scenery at that time.
A new construction of the olympic ski jump has become necessary, because the International Ski Federation FIS had not prolonged the certificate of the outdated ski jump. The new Garmisch Partenkirchen ski jump will grow out of plans of a joint venture of engineers and architects from Munich and the Allgäu area that came out on top during an international contest of architects against well known competitors like Zaha Hadid (London). The winning draft of the working group Mayr & Ludescher engineers (Munich), Sieber & Renn architects (Sonthofen) and the bureau of architects terrain: Leonhard and Mayr (Munich) impresses by its futuristic optics with the sky scraping inrun and furthermore by the functionality of the planned construction. At that point the planners could take advantage of the know-how taken from the new construction of the ski jump in Oberstdorf in 2003, implemented by Alfred Sieber and Hans-Martin Renn from Sonthofen.