‘94 WINTER OLYMPICS / LILLEHAMMER : Norwegians Clean Up in Ski Jumping : Ski jumping: Countrymen Bredesen and Ottesen win gold and silver medals in dream domination of the event.

Espen Bredesen got it almost exactly right the first time. Then the best ski jumper in Norway improved on that, helping make Friday a day for the ages in Norwegian skiing history.

Bredesen’s two stylish jumps off the normal hill gave him the gold medal, at the expense of teammate Lasse Ottesen, who wound up with the silver.

And those medals, thrown in with the three won by Norwegians in the men’s Alpine combined earlier in the day, had the crowd at the jumping hill singing the Norwegian victory song long into the afternoon, probably into evening and maybe into this morning.

Bredesen had jumps of 329 feet 8 inches and 341-2, a hill record, for 282 points. Ottesen jumped 336-3 and 321, totaling 268 points. German Dieter Thoma was third, totaling 260 1/2 points on jumps of 323-1 and 336-3.

Bredesen had finished second to Thoma’s teammate, Jens Weissflog, in the big-hill competition Sunday, but Norway was shut out of the medals Tuesday in the team event, so the 1-2 finish of Bredesen and Ottesen was probably even more than most Norwegians had hoped for. Not so Bredesen.

“I don’t think I needed any inspiration but with the Norwegians doing so good in Alpine, I said to Lasse, ‘Now we have to do something.’ ” he said. “I’ve known for a long time that Lasse is a very good skier and I hoped he could pull it off today.”

Ottesen not only pulled it off, he came close to relegating Bredesen to second. Jumping midway through the first round, he launched himself into the longest jump to that point, then sat back and waited, watching the other top guns--Thoma, Andreas Goldberger of Austria, Weissflog, even Bredesen--all fail to beat it.

Ottesen, however, had been antsy in the air and when Bredesen jumped, the difference was obvious to observers and judges. Although his jump was shorter, Bredesen kept his body still in the air and moved into the lead on style points.

He wasn’t happy, though, to have been outdistanced.

“The first jump was good but not perfect,” Bredesen said. “I was a little late on the takeoff and figured I could do better.”

And so he did. Jumping last in the second round, right behind Ottesen, he needed near perfection, knew it and got it.

“I was much more aggressive,” he said. “I got more height.”

He also got the distance he was looking for, even forcing himself to cut the jump a bit short for fear of overshooting the landing area.

“I could have had a few more meters but I was afraid I was too high,” he said. “I felt when I jumped that it was going to be a good one. When you hit a good jump, you know it. The feeling is just incredible. Everything is just perfect.”

Weissflog, who had outjumped a leading Bredesen in the second round for the gold medal on the big hill Sunday, had two good jumps but made an untidy landing the first time around, then failed to get high enough on his second jump and finished fourth.

“Up on the hill before the last jump, I was saying to myself, ‘Don’t do the same thing again (as on Sunday),’ ” Bredesen said.

And when he nailed the second jump, Norway had finished first and second in Olympic jumping competition for the first time since the ’52 Games at Oslo.

“That’s great,” Bredesen said. “Lasse pulled off a very good jump and I did, too, and everything is terrific.”