PREDAZZO, Italy — Miran Tepeš leans out the window of the jury room in the ski jumping stadium judges tower, cold breath frosting in the air.
Halfway up the 143-meter ski jump, three stories above ground, Tepeš watches the trees for any sign of movement. He feels the wind on his face, looks at the flags lining the hill and monitors the wind readings, measured from eight sensors along the ski jump that directly feed a computer in the tower.
Satisfied nothing is awry, Tepeš hits a button on a handheld keypad attached to the window frame.
First, a beep. Then, the sound of skis scraping against the track, as the first athlete pushes off the bar and shoots herself downward, where the track lets go of the hill.
Next, a whoosh as she leaves the ground, skis departing from the track, body steady in the air. Then, the silence of flight.
About a half hour before the start of the trial jump in the women’s large hill on Sunday night, Tepeš hikes up to the tower to take his position for the night. Alongside the hill is a funicular, which stops at the tower for coaches and staff and for athletes at the top of the jump. But Tepeš chooses to hike up the mix of mud, snow and ice along the mountain in the Dolomites, host to Olympic ski jumping.
The Milan Cortina Games are Tepeš’ seventh Olympics as a race official for the International Ski and Snowboard Federation. Before that, he competed in three Olympics himself for Yugoslavia (now Slovenia), in 1980, 1984 and 1988, where he won team silver.
After retiring from ski jumping, Tepeš studied geography, including meteorology, and spent a few years in sales before starting to work with FIS, nearly 30 years ago. At the Olympics, Tepeš is ski jumping’s resident meteorologist.
To an outside eye, ski jumping might look like controlled falling, but talk to a few athletes, and you quickly learn it feels more like flying.
“It’s a big pleasure,” Tepeš said. “You feel how the aerodynamics works on your body and you feel like a bird for a couple of seconds.”
Miran Tepeš looks out on the Olympic ski jumping hill in Predazzo, Italy. (Rebecca Tauber / The Athletic)
As ski jumpers take off, they rely on the air under their skis to lift them up, soaring through the air like an airplane. And like an airplane, anticipating turbulence is crucial.
Too windy, and conditions can quickly become unsafe for the athletes. Gusts influence the fairness of competition, too. A strong headwind lifting a ski jumper could give an athlete an unfair advantage, while a strong tailwind pushing an athlete quickly toward the ground puts them at a disadvantage.
This is where Tepeš comes in. He and a group of jury members act as air traffic control, constantly monitoring wind levels in the lead-up to and during the competition. Tepeš makes sure wind conditions stay safe and fair, while the jury makes sure no athlete starts too far up the jump to gather too much speed and land dangerously, or too low down the jump to receive a competitive disadvantage.
On Sunday night, wind conditions remained rather stable, without huge gusts or a massive tailwind, a common occurrence on this hill as wind comes down off the mountain. But minor wind changes can have large effects, too, which is why Tepeš monitors even the most marginal changes in the weather.
A screen shows wind readings from sensors around the Olympic ski jump venue in Predazzo, Italy. Eight different monitoring stations feed into it. (Rebecca Tauber / The Athletic)
To his left by the window, one half of Tepeš’ monitor shows a rendering of the jump with constantly moving arrows, showing the size and direction of the wind. If it gets too gusty, the screen will flash red and start beeping, disabling Tepeš’ ability to send the next athlete until the gust dies down.
The other half of the monitor charts the live wind speed average from 160 data points across eight different stations, constantly measuring the forecast as athletes fly through the air. In ski jumping, an athlete’s score consists of distance, style points decided by judges poking their heads out the window one floor below, and wind compensation. Athletes also get bonus points for how low they start down the hill, based on weather and skill.
The data populating Tepeš’ monitor automatically feeds a formula that calculates how many wind compensation points each athlete receives, based on the difficulty of the wind during each athlete’s jump compared to the recent average.
As the athletes compete, Tepeš talks with the jury members and communicates on a walkie-talkie with other officials about the conditions. Is the snow at the bottom too packed, making landing a challenge? Has the wind changed, and should athletes start their jumps lower down the hill as a result? Is everyone ready to go?
When ski jumping’s wind expert is not tracking wind and safety conditions on a ski jump, he spends his time tracking wind and safety conditions on his sailboat. Tepeš has circumnavigated the globe three times in the past two decades, and his 14-meter sailboat is sitting docked in Indonesia, waiting for him to finish ski jumping season.
Tepeš sometimes uses the same wind models to figure out what to expect from the weather, both at the ski jump and on his sailboat. The difference is, ski jumpers hope for still skies. For a sailor, not so much.
“Where the ski jumping ends, then the sailing begins,” he said.
Ski jumping season covers the summer and winter. In the fall and spring, Tepeš sets sail. Often traveling with family or friends, he keeps a sailing blog, chronicling his journey.
“The wind was less than ten knots from the east, but the sea was quite calm and Skokica (his boat) sailed north quite quickly in such conditions with the wind at her side,” he wrote in Slovenian about a recent trip through Komodo, part of the Indonesian archipelago.
Tepeš has published multiple books about sailing, including one titled “With the Wind,” about sailing the world from 2006 to 2008.
“I didn’t find myself on the way, because I wasn’t looking for myself, but I did see a lot of sea and some interesting countries,” he wrote in Slovenian on his website about the book.
During a trip from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean, Tepeš wrote about a broken rudder sensor that was messing up his autopilot system.
“It’s a great feeling when I manage to fix something myself,” he wrote.
The jury room (at left) at the Predazzo Ski Jumping Stadium, during the Italian championships in December. (Mattia Ozbot / Getty Images)
Tepeš brings the same skills to the judges tower, analyzing weather data and using it to make decisions about safety and strategy.
“Let’s say a weather front is approaching, then it can happen, we will have snow or rain,” Tepeš said. “We know how to prepare the hill, so this is also important, to get everything ready on time.”
Ski jumping didn’t always have such a sophisticated weather forecasting system. In Tepeš’ days as an athlete, dramatic changes in the wind were one of the sport’s uncontrollables, a gust of bad luck leaving the best athletes off the podium. It also opened the door for more injuries.
Athletes and coaches still sometimes criticize the fairness of the FIS’s points and question the method behind the formula, with debates around whether the federation has gotten wind compensation right. But Tepeš thinks things have improved since his competition days.
“I am pretty, let’s say, happy that we, in the last 20 years, we developed ski jumping to be much more safe and fair,” Tepeš said. “Before it was much more dependent on luck.”
Members of the jury look out on the ski jumping hill in Predazzo, Italy. (Rebecca Tauber / The Athletic)
It’s quiet in the judges’ tower after the trial round, moments before the women are set to begin the official competition. In the room are three jury members, two timekeepers, a recordkeeper and Tepeš. They have spent the past few minutes discussing how high up on the hill the athletes should start their jump based on their ability and the wind conditions, so athletes can fly far enough to showcase their skills but not too far as to create a safety hazard.
One of the jury members passes around a fist bump and a solemn “Good work,” before the competition officially kicks off.
Over the next two hours, the room stays quiet, other than the occasional crackle from a walkie-talkie, intermittent chat about conditions and the scrape of skis against snow. Faint music and distant cheers from the crowd filter up from down below.
On Sunday night, it was Norway’s Anna Odine Strøm who best mastered the air, taking gold to roaring fans.
But in this quiet room, high up on the side of the mountain, Tepeš, a neutral observer, didn’t care about that. He cared about the wind making its way down the mountain, its predictable patterns and its unpredictable nature.
His head stuck out the window, Tepeš felt the wind on his face and thought about flying.