DCHP-2

barrel-jumping barrel jumping, Barrel Jumping DCHP-2 (October 2016)

• n. — Sports

  a sport in which ice skaters jump over a row of barrels attempting to go the farthest (see Image 1).

  Type: 5. Frequency — The sport of barrel jumping is both a recreational and competitive sport with world championships. After gaining speed by skating around a rink, competitors propel themselves feet-first over a number of barrels laid out on the ice. Athletes are scored solely on distance. The maximum distance is twelve barrels at the competitive level, with a maximum of three attempts per distance (see Encyclopedia of World Sport, s.v. "barrel jumping"). The sport has been described as a combination of "speed-skating, high jump and long jump" (see the 1989 quotation). Although barrel-jumping is a competitive sport, it also appears to be a common form of entertainment at winter festivals or carnivals (see Canadian Encyclopedia, s.v. "Winter Festivals"), such as Ottawa's Winterlude Festival (see the 1947 and 2011 quotations). Canadian attestations suggest that the sport was popular in Canada long before the first World Championships were organized in 1951 (see the 1896 and 1908 quotations). The term is most frequent in Canada (see Chart 1).
  See also COD-2, s.v. "barrel-jumping", which is marked "Cdn", and OED-3, s.v. "barrel jumping", which is marked "chiefly N. Amer.".