It’s because the sport is now about handicapped distance to stop people from just overshooting the hill entirely. They could just build bigger hills if they wanted more distance but what’s the point? With no handicap it just becomes about who has the balls to jump closest to the flat without breaking both femurs.
The first recorded ski jump was <10 meters in the early 1800s. 60 years later the sport began to grow more popular, and they could hit 20 meters.
The record has basically crawled up from there one or two meters at a time. We’re now at 254.5m, only 4 meters further than we were eleven years ago
It’s because the sport is now about handicapped distance to stop people from just overshooting the hill entirely. They could just build bigger hills if they wanted more distance but what’s the point? With no handicap it just becomes about who has the balls to jump closest to the flat without breaking both femurs.
Sounds like we’re close to the asymptote then.