Germany without a medal in Planica

Sall hell broke loose again in the Valley of the Schanzen. And again the enthusiastic spectators sang the national anthem. It was a great day for Slovenian ski jumpers. From now on you can call yourself world champion with the team. A title that the German quartet had actually striven for. But the defending champions were not in the best World Cup form on Saturday.

Fifth place for Markus Eisenbichler, Constantin Schmid, Andreas Wellinger and Karl Geiger – that is by no means what the team of national coach Stefan Horngacher had imagined for their last competition at the Nordic World Championships in Planica. “It just wasn’t enough,” said Geiger. “We have to accept that. The others were better.”

“We gambled”

The best were the ski jumpers from the World Cup country. With the momentum of the individual victory, which Timi Zajc had managed the day before on the large hill, his teammates Lovro Kos, Ziga Jelar and Anze Lanisek also got into a real frenzy. In the end, their lead over the Norwegians was 12.9 points. Team Austria was third. The gap between the Germans and the Slovenians, who could hardly believe their luck, was 51.2 points – that’s the equivalent of a little more than 28 meters.

“We gambled with me,” said Eisenbichler about the plan to get more bonus points by changing the approach hatch. A variation that works every now and then and which the Norwegian coach Alexander Stöckl often resorted to in conjunction with his lead jumper Halvor Egner Granerud. “Unfortunately half a meter was missing. But the second jump was great,” said Eisenbichler. “And we know that we are extremely behind. I have to digest this first. It sucks when you don’t get a medal. We can’t blame ourselves for anything in terms of spirit and will.”

On Saturday, however, “it didn’t end for us”, as Horngacher said self-critically in the mixed zone of the large hill at Planica. “Who dares nothing, gains nothing,” said the Tyrolean. “All in all, we made too many individual mistakes.” Horst Hüttel spoke of the “game changer” that Horngacher wanted his jumpers to be. But the sports director of the German Ski Association, who is responsible for ski jumping and Nordic combined, also had to acknowledge the class of the competition. Nevertheless, he said: “On the large hill we are close to the top of the world.”

Fifth place in the team competition is a disappointment for the champion of 2019 and 2021. Nevertheless, the flying artists leave the Slovenian valley of ski jumps with positive and encouraging impressions, experiences and results. The fact that Wellinger and Geiger had won silver and bronze on the small hill was not necessarily expected in this form. “We jumped a good World Championships,” said Horngacher.

Geiger tried to make his own personal peace with the large hill on Saturday, but the man from Oberstdorf didn’t ultimately succeed. “The hill is a noodle for me, I have problems with it.” But this alone was not the reason for fifth place. The other nations were simply better on this last day of jumping at a World Championships that, in terms of atmosphere, only picked up speed very late.

For the grand finale, the atmosphere was once again magnificent. The deserved double success of the Slovenians in singles and in the team played a decisive role. The Germans also recognized this. “You have to say that the Slovenians and the Norwegians did an incredibly good job. They were at the upper end of their own possibilities, we were more in the middle. And my first jump was at the bottom,” said Andreas Wellinger.