The first weekend of the World Championships was not always a pleasure for the German Nordic athletes. Although Karl Geiger started with a silver jump two years ago, otherwise the DSV held back on the normal hill. And even at the World Cup before that, little had happened, one almost feared that the best years could be over. Such doubts have now disappeared within 48 hours.
The women’s and men’s teams of the German Ski Association presented an outstanding start to the World Championships in Planica/Slovenia by their own standards. Almost every jump or combination competition was a success, with ski jumper and now also world champion Katharina Althaus possibly playing a key role. She presented the first major success, which noticeably relieved the tension and continued on Saturday evening with silver and bronze for ski jumpers Andreas Wellinger and Karl Geiger.
The breast solver for the whole team: Katharina Althaus on Thursday with her gold medal at the start of the World Championships.
(Photo: Daniel Karmann/dpa)
On Thursday, Althaus opened the event with a win that probably overwhelmed her emotionally because she had been chasing him for years. She cried a lot of tears of joy, now everything seems to be easy for her, after a day of training came the next challenge, the team competition. In this she had blurred the last jump a bit, but stood the first one wide and clean and the work of her colleagues Anna Rupprecht, Luisa Görlich and Selina Freitag led to the next top result: gold again. And Althaus has more options to win: the Germans have often dominated mixed jumping (on Sunday) and flying on the large hill (on Wednesday) is their passion anyway. But it doesn’t have to be at the top, Althaus may be demonstrating it, but the feeling of happiness of victory also spread to colleagues who came second or third.
Perfect division of the race: Nordic combined athlete Julian Schmid finishes ahead of Austrian Franz-Josef Rehrl – in second place behind Jarl Magnus Riiber, but “very, very happy”.
(Photo: Daniel Karmann/dpa)
For example, Julian Schmid, the Nordic combined athlete, said on Saturday: “It was just a good race. I’m very, very happy with the silver medal.” He correctly underlined this sentence because he was always right with his race, with its division and the right attack on the decisive climb against the Austrian Franz-Josef Rehrl. And second, he must have figured that, too, if you jump and run away from Jarl Magnus Riiber, who was the best combined athlete of the time, no matter how poor.
The Norwegian’s recovery plan worked on time. The gastrointestinal parasite that he had caught weeks ago, which made him unable to eat and therefore not train, was obviously rid of him again in the first combined competition, the one on the normal hill. He simply flew away from the rest of the field, the gap was so big that he was even able to slow down at the end of the 10-kilometer cross-country lap.
Silver at 17: Nathalie Armbruster came second in the combination at her World Championship premiere.
(Photo: Memmler/Eibner/Imago)
The combination of the women was less spectacular, won by the series winner Gyda Westvold Hansen from Norway. The next development of the younger generation of this field of jumpers and runners was more exciting. They didn’t want to overwhelm 17-year-old Nathalie Armbruster and her talent too early, it was questionable whether the stage at the World Cup wasn’t too big for her. But Armbruster, who comes from the Black Forest, had come a long way – she jumped and ran like in the World Cup on Friday – with the result that she later had a silver medal around her neck.
Such a normal hill World Championships weekend is actually a stage for the Norwegians, but this time they missed out on a medal that was definitely included. Halvor Egner Granerud, the outstanding jumper this winter, who was still able to counter some poorer jumps, fell back to eleventh place this time. The evening was late, the air was cold in Planica in the so-called valley of the hills, after a start with many surprises, but also two last medals, as a kind of bouncer into the night.
Silver finish: At the end of an extremely successful day for the German team, ski jumper Andreas Wellinger received the medal for second place on the normal hill – ahead of his teammate Karl Geiger in third place.
(Photo: Daniel Karmann/dpa)
The three who finally stood on the podium couldn’t stop grinning: Piotr Zyla, the Pole, who just can’t believe his successes, which he was able to show for a particularly long time this time. As the winner, he was caught by the cameras in the leader zone for an extra long time, because after 13th place in the first round he jumped onto the top podium; and the Germans Wellinger and Geiger, who closed this memorable World Championship opener with clean and wind-resistant jumps.
