April 10, 2009 – The five Sub-Committees for Ski Jumping and the Nordic Combined Executive Board and Committee as well as the Ski Jumping/Nordic Combined Coordination Group held their traditional spring meetings at the Hilton Zürich Airport (Sui) last weekend. Based on the so-called “Funnel System,” the proposals of the respective Sub-Committees have now been collected and circulated to the National Ski Associations for comment. These comments will then be reviewed by the Ski Jumping and Nordic Committees and the Committee for Competition Equipment at the FIS Calendar Conference in Dubrovnik (Cro) in May and submitted to approval by the FIS Council in its next meeting in Vancouver (Can) in mid-June. The National Ski Associations are requested to comment on the proposals by May 8.

Much of the discussion at the Committee meetings in Zürich focused on analyzing the past season and conducting a final review of the different calendars planned for the upcoming season, including the Summer Grand Prix and Continental Cup series. The main item being reviewed by the National Ski Associations in the Funnel System concerns an idea that would provide the competition management and the team coaches with more flexibility in determining the length of the inrun and adapting it, if necessary, even in the middle of the competition. Scoring fairness in such cases would be ensured with the help of a special mathematical formula specific to each hill. This idea is planned to be tested at the Summer Grand Prix competitions as of August.