Winter Olympics Reminder: The terminal velocity of a human body is about 200KPH
We periodically see stories like this:
Miracle Texas Teen Survives 3,000 Foot Fall in Skydiving Accident
http://www.weather.com/news/texas-teen-survives-3000-foot-fall-skydiving-accident-20140203
And these incidents are indeed intriguing, and the girl is making a great recovery and congratulations on that. By the extreme height of the fall (3000, 4000, 6000 feet) is not real relevant because a human body in freefall through air reaches its maximum velocity pretty quickly, meaning that whether you jump off a tall building or jump out of an airplane you will hit the ground at about the same speed.
Now, in a vacuum you would keep accelerating. But the pull of the Earth can only pull a person through the air but so fast. (That is, through the air near the surface, where it is thick and breathable)
And the relevance to the winter Olympics is this. Aside from sky-diving, the only time I think of where people intentionally deal with their own terminal velocity is speed skiing, where the density of air puts a practical upper limit on the speed. And where they do, at their best, achieve almost the same speed they would reach jumping off a cliff.