Eighty five years is a long time between victories. But that's how long it's been since an American ski jumper won a World Championship medal in a sport dominated by Europeans.

The first was Anders Haugen, who took third at the 1924 championships in Chamonix, France, which later would become recognized as the first modern Winter Olympics (more on him, and how there was the matter of a small, 50-year delay in getting his medal, in a second.)

The second was Lindsey Van, 24, of Park City, whose victory today in the Czech Republic was even more historic. This was the first ever women's world championship, and Van will go down in the record books as the sport's first female world champion.

Van, who stands all of 5-foot-3, nailed a second jump in conditions so poor her goggles were fogged and she could barely see past the tips of her skis. She told observers she landed the biggest jump of her life -- 3.5 meters farther than the next-closest competitor -- "just by feel."

"It hasn't really set in yet," Van told reporters afterward. "I haven't had five minutes alone today. It's been hard to think about what just happened, but it's coming in slowly."

"I am proud of this," she said later, after gathering her thoughts. "It means a lot to me to be my sport's first World Champion and have the first gold medal in ski jumping for our country. "That's something nobody has ever done and I did it."

(Note: You can watch Van's historic jump, and reaction to winning, on the skiing section of universalsports.com.)

The victory, over 37 competitors, is likely to add weight to the momentum, growing especially in North America, to add women's ski jumping as a medal sport at the Winter Olympics. A serious push to add the sport for the 2010 Winter Games was rebuffed by the International Olympic Committee and the Vancouver Organizing Committee.

The resistance is a bit hard to understand. Women's ski jumping is one of the last sports where men compete and women are excluded. And it would be competed on the same ski jumps already built for men. Van, in fact, holds the hill record (105.5 meters) for both men and women at Whistler Olympic Park.

But Olympic officials have insisted that not enough athletes from enough different countries participate, possibly creating an unfair medal advantage for those that do (this is not unusual politics at the IOC level).

Female athletes say that's bunk. A group of them, including Van, have filed a discrimination suit against VANOC in British Columbia courts. A trial date is set for April 20.

Meantime, America's Nordic community was doing something today it really never has done -- basking in glory. And it wasn't all because of Van.

Nordic combined skier Todd Lodwick, 32, of Steamboat Springs, Colo., who retired after the last Olympics but reappeared on the World Cup circuit this season, won his own world title by finishing first in a mass start event at the same Nordic Worlds. Teammate Billy Demong of Vermontville, N.Y., who remains among the World Cup overall leaders, finished fifth.

"This is a dream come true and a crazy fairytale that someone dreamt up for me to come out of retirement to ski at World Championships and win a medal," Lodwick told U.S. Skiing. "Words cannot describe it. The biggest thing about my comeback was World Championships. It still hasn't set in, but today I am the best in the world."

The combination of Lodwick, Demong and teammate Johnny Spillane gives America a triple-threat shot at its first Nordic combined medal at the 2010 Winter Games. The U.S. narrowly missed out on a team medal at the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Games.

That promised Haugen history lesson

Now, a fascinating historical note about Anders Haugen, that truly pioneering American jumper, straight from the pages of a new book, The Winter Olympics: An Insider's Guide to the Legends, the Lore and the Games, by some guy named Judd:

One of the most fascinating medal stories in Winter Olympic history involved Anders Haugen, who spent most of his life in the Lake Tahoe area teaching skiing -- and not knowing he was the only American ever to win a ski-jumping Olympic medal.

The story began in 1924 at Chamonix, where Haugen, then 36, competed in the 70-meter ski jump for America. He finished fourth behind Norwegian skiing and jumping legend Thorleif Haug - or so he thought.

Even at the time, the decision was hotly disputed.

Americans on the scene pointed out that Haugen's combined distance for his two jumps was greater than Haug's. But judges said Haugen's unorthodox style - far ahead of his time in aerodynamics, Haugen leaned far out over the tips of his skis -- had cost him too many style points to earn the medal.

He lived with the decision for 50 years, until a chance event in Norway changed history. At a 1974 gathering marking the half-century reunion of Norwegian athletes from the Chamonix Games, skier Thoralf Stromstad, who had finished second to Haug in the Nordic combined, sat down with historian Jakob Vaage and discovered an error in the computation of scores that had gone unnoticed for half a century.

The final score sheet showed Haug with 18.00 points, compared to Haugen's 17.916. But the math on Haug's score was wrong; the actual score should have been Haugen, 17.916, Haug, 17.821. The finding was reported to the IOC, which officially reversed the medal standings.

Norwegians didn't protest. Haug had his own handful of medals from those Games. In addition to the falsely awarded bronze, Haug, then 29, won gold in the Nordic combined as well as the 50 km and 18 km cross-country ski races. (The latter race result was combined with the ski jump for the Nordic combined medal.)

So it was that in September, 1974, Haugen, a three-time U.S. champion who was born in Norway and emigrated to the U.S. in 1908, was invited to the legendary ski jump at Holmenkollen in Oslo and at long last presented his bronze medal. It was awarded by the Haug's daughter, Anna Marie Magnussen, who had kept her father's medals for 40 years after his death.

On that day, Anders Haugen, who had paid his own way to the Chamonix Games, was 85 years old -- no doubt the oldest man ever to dip his head to receive an Olympic medal. When he died at age 95, he was the only American to ever earn one in ski jumping. He still is.

Photos: Kris Dobie, U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association: Lindsey Van, 24, of Park City, competes in the U.S. Ski Jumping Championships in October at Lake Placid, N.Y. Center: Lindsey Van/Kris Dobie, USSA. Bottom: Todd Lodwick/Tom Kelly, USSA