Ema Klinec is the inaugural winner of the historic first women’s ski flying event. The Slovenian was unbeatable in the competition on Sunday (March 19, 2023) on the “Monsterbakken” in Vikersund, in which the 15 best in the Raw Air Tour rating were allowed to take part. The best German pilot was Katharina Althaus in fourth place. Between them were the Norwegian Silje Opseth and Yuki Ito from Japan.
Finally a level playing field! After years of debates about the feasibility of women’s ski jumping, the time had come on Sunday for the first time. Despite all the competition, the competition was characterized by a family atmosphere among the athletes, with beaming faces everywhere. “That makes buck” or “it’s awesome” were commonly used vocabulary.
But the sporting aspect was also right. Of course there was a certain scattering in the field, but this was and is also present among the men. There were a total of six flights over the magical 200 meter mark. Ema Klinec from ski flying crazy Slovenia was the superior athlete in all attempts and also set a new women’s world record with 226 meters.
She not only secured the day’s victory and thus went down in history as the first winner of a ski flying competition, she also won the overall ranking of the Raw Air Tour.
DSV jumpers miss the 200 meter mark
After 198.5 meters in the test round, Katharina Althaus also hoped for a flight over 200 meters. In the first round she was six meters short, but with difficult downwind conditions in the final she came up to 190 meters. This also meant that the attack on overall victory in the raw air rating fell flat because Klinec was unbeatable at the front. So Althaus finished second there.
Althaus was correspondingly dissatisfied immediately after the competition. “Unfortunately, my dream did not come true. I wish I had a 200 with me. It was still cool to fly for the first time and to be able to write history“Said the woman from Oberstdorf on the Sportschau microphone, but she was already looking ahead:”I definitely have to keep going, the 200 is a childhood dream that I still want to fulfill. I’ll clean everything up.”
Friday claims third place on the Raw Air Tour
At the end, Selina Freitag caught one of her worse jumps, clearly missed the targeted 200 meters and had to land almost 30 meters earlier. In the first round she had sailed 188 meters. As tenth in the daily ranking, she was able to maintain her third place in the final ranking of the Raw Air Tour.
With Anna Rupprecht there was a third DSV starter. In the first round, she set a new personal record of 173 meters. On her second jump she was a little too steep in the air and couldn’t pick up any speed. It was already over after 142.5 meters. She ended up in 14th place.
