Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod, a show about the past, Rediscovered.

Though some people are partisan to the Summer Olympics, the swimming, the diving, the gymnastics,

I've always been a Winter Olympics guy. The bobset, the luge, the downhill skiers.

These athletes are literally hurling their bodies at great speeds or great distances

for nothing more than pride.

Pride in their country, pride in their bravery, pride in sheer survival.

But of all these athletes, the ones who are, to me, most clearly engaging in a

possible act of suicide are the ski jumpers, shooting down that huge ramp on their long skis,

then taking off like birds, flying more than 800 feet in the air, and then landing,

actually landing on two feet and not dying. Incredible. So where on earth

did this sport come from? Not surprisingly, it all began with some guy who wanted to show off for

his buddies. His name was Ola Rai, and he was from Norway, a very cold country that has always excelled in the

winter games. It was 1808. Rye was an officer in the Norwegian army. One day, in the dead of winter,

he wanted to show his men how well he could ski, and of course, how brave he was. So Rye found a hill that looked similar but somewhat smaller

than the hills Olympians jump from today. He went up, zoomed down on two skis, and soared about

30 feet. Word spread around the country and eventually the notion of flying through the air on two

skis and miraculously not dying took

hold as a sport in Norway, then throughout Europe, and then in the United States.

Ski jumping became so popular that the Ringling Brothers even added it to the circus.

And when the very first Winter Olympics was held in 1924,

ski jumping was one of the six sports included,

although it was just for men at the time.

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