World Cup in Planica: German ski jumpers celebrate gold – revenge after the Olympic scandal

Stand: 26.02.2023 | Reading time: 2 minutes

Dhe first weekend of the Nordic World Ski Championships in Planica ends with gold for the German team: on Sunday evening the mixed team secured the title on the normal hill in ski jumping. Katharina Althaus, Selina Freitag, Andreas Wellinger and Karl Geiger have already won the eighth medal for the German team and the third in gold in the title fights that have been going on in Slovenia since Thursday. Earlier that day, the combined athletes had won silver behind Norway at the world championship premiere of the mixed team.

For the German ski jumping team, the title fights in Planica become festivals. Gold for Althaus in the individual, gold for the women’s team, silver for Wellinger and bronze for Geiger on the normal hill on Saturday evening. And now the mixed title. The Germans won ahead of Norway with Tournament winner Halvor Egner Granerud and host Slovenia.

“Andi’s last jump was outstanding. He did really great. Katha made a flight here, it was tremendous. Unbelievable, we defended the title,” said national coach Stefan Horngacher. After the coup, Wellinger, Althaus, Geiger and Freitag proudly presented the black, red and gold flag.

For the German ski jumpers, this victory should also be somewhat satisfying: At the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, the premiere of the mixed competition on the sport’s biggest stage ended in a drama. The jumping turned into a farce due to an unprecedented accumulation of disqualifications, several top nations were affected and only the women. Among them was Katharina Althaus, who had previously won Olympic silver in the individual. In the mixed competition she jumped in the same suit and was disqualified, so the German quartet had no chance.

Ski jumper Althaus can write history

“It took me a long time to digest that, and for a long time I still had moments when I thought about it and had to nibble on it,” says Althaus recently in the WELT talk. “I’ve checked it off now.”

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Disqualifications in Beijing

And now she can make history at the World Championships in Planica. After individual gold on Thursday, team gold on Saturday and the mixed title on Sunday, she still has another chance: jumping off the large hill on Wednesday. Four titles at one world championship – that has never happened before in ski jumping. Teammate Markus Eisenbichler won gold three times in Seefeld and Innsbruck in 2019, just like Austria’s record World Cup winner Gregor Schlierenzauer in Oslo in 2011. Althaus could pass the two.

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