Norheim, Sondre

Sondre Norheim, (born June 10, 1825, Morgedal, Telemark, Norway—died March 9, 1897, Denbigh, North Dakota, U.S.), Norwegian skier who revolutionized ski design and ski equipment and helped to standardize certain aspects of the sport.

Norheim in 1860 was the first to use bindings of willow, cane, and birch root around the heel from each side of the toe strap to fasten the boot to the ski, thus revolutionizing skiing and making ski jumping possible. He himself won the first known jumping competition, held at Telemark in 1866. He also designed skis with incurving sides, the prototype for modern skis. He developed basic skiing turns, which became standard as the stem turn, the Christiania, and the stem Christiania. In 1850 he had been the first skier to perform parallel turns. In 1868 Norheim and some friends skied 322 km (200 miles) from Telemark to Christiania (later Oslo), where he made a jump of 18 metres (59 feet). He is credited with developing in 1870 the first modern sidecut in skis, producing a ski narrower in the middle and wider at the ends.