Lahti Ski Games

Lahti Ski Games
Organizers	Lahti Ski Club, Lahti city and Finnish Ski Association (since 1950)
Location	Lahti
Country	Finland
First Games	1923
Games cancelled	1930, 1940 and 1942
World Championships	1926, 1938, 1958, 1978, 1989, 2001 and 2017
Attendance record	450,000
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Lahti Ski Games^[1] is an annual international Nordic skiing tournament. The games last for three days, during which participants compete in cross-country skiing, ski jumping, and Nordic combined.

In the nearly 90-year history of the Lahti Ski Games, the fireworks seen on Saturday night have become one of the highlights of the event. The goal of establishing the games was to hold a Finland competition similar to the Holmenkollen Ski Festival. The cross-country skiing stadium & ski jump stadium is together with Holmenkollen in Oslo possibly the best stadium for such events in the world. From the large covered stands the attendees can see the skiers, first at the top of the hill on the opposite side, after a couple seconds with viewing blocked they then come out of a part of the surrounding woods, down a slope which ends in a dangerous left turn, and now the skiers are inside the stadium with the long U-turn to the finish just below the covered stand. Most of the hill below the slope which leads into the stadium and 2/3 of the "final U", is terraced with stands. At maximum capacity, close to 100,000 people can watch the end of the races inside the stadium. Within Nordic Skiing Lahti feels something like what old Wembley Stadium was during an FA Cup Final. Also the ski-jumping arena is large, but there are quite a few of that kind also elsewhere.

The idea for the games came from a Finnish legend, Lauri Pihkala in 1922. He wrote an article about a competition equal to the Holmenkollen Ski Festival after the double win of Anton Collin and Tapani Niku at Holmenkollen the same year. In the article Pihkala suggested Lahti as the location for the competition because of the city’s location and grounds.