Monday’s Rutland Herald reports:

BRATTLEBORO — The youngest U.S. Olympic ski jumper in history bested more than 40 world athletes — and Mother Nature — to win Sunday's 90th anniversary Fred Harris Memorial Tournament during the once-a-year opening of Vermont's only Olympic-size ski jump.

Anders Johnson, 22, of Plattsburgh, N.Y., leapt off a melting Harris Hill launch and onto a mushy landing surrounded by 4,200 weekend spectators and a small army of technicians spraying manmade snow and a cold-hold cover of granular nitrogen fertilizer.

“For how warm it has been, it's impressive how they got the hill ready,” said Johnson, who competed in his first Winter Games at age 16. “It's February, but it feels like April — do a little jumping and get a tan.”

The Brattleboro competition served as the finals for both Team USA (training for the next Olympics in 2014) and the nation's Collegiate Ski Association, as well as this country's first International Ski Federation Cup tournament, which drew elite athletes from the United States, Austria, Canada, Czech Republic, Norway, Slovenia and Ukraine.

Two jumpers winning honors boasted Vermont ties. Third-place finisher Nicholas Alexander, a 23-year-old veteran of the 2010 Olympics, was born in Brattleboro and now lives in Lebanon, N.H. Spencer Knickerbocker, 19, returned to his hometown after training with the U.S. Nordic combined development team in Steamboat Springs, Colo., to win the amateur open division Saturday and take second in the same category Sunday.

The weekend contest also featured three U.S. women who, after decades of exclusion from the male-only event in the Olympics, will finally be able to complete in the Winter Games in 2014.

Harris Hill is the only 90-meter ski jump in New England and one of just six of its size in the nation. But because volunteers maintain everything — they added the snowmaking pipe in 1985, a new $20,000 judging stand in 2003, a new launch ramp in 2009 and a new coaching tower this year — the jump opens only one weekend each February.

Since its creation in 1922, the hill has hosted nine national championships, starting in 1924 with the first finals held in the East and continuing up to the U.S. qualifiers for the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France. The event has been cancelled only by six pre-snowmaking droughts, World War II and a three-year hiatus from 2006 to 2008 for nearly $600,000 in renovations.

“This is my first time in Brattleboro,” said Johnson, now aiming for this third Olympics. “I'll definitely be coming back.”