The leap back to the beginning of your professional life can be a long one. With Daniela Iraschko-Stolz it is difficult to locate exactly. In any case, it was still at primary school age when students kept poetry albums and wrote down their secret career aspirations: doctor, baker, moon traveler, inventor. Eight-year-old Iraschko wrote: “I want to go to the Olympics.”
And if she wanted something, then it came true, and with Iraschko-Stolz even twice as much. She became a footballer in the highest league in Austria and even more. Her ski jumping career, which partly ran parallel to football, made her world famous in winter sports. Less because of her successes, such as the silver medal at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi behind Germany’s Carina Vogt, but because of her persistence. Nevertheless, in the past few weeks she has realized that she can’t continue; her body has become less and less able to cope with the stress of this sport. Now she has ended her long career.
The coach didn’t want to take her on, then he became her biggest fan
The initial question was: Is this possible? Can you be a soccer goalkeeper and a ski jumper at the same time? Actually not. Football wants thick thighs and a robust, muscular body, ski jumping requires jumping power and otherwise as little weight as possible. So you would have to be strong like a gorilla in the summer and light like a seagull in the winter, actually unthinkable, but not with Iraschko.
The theme of her career and her life was to push boundaries. 1995, in the 4,000-inhabitant town of Eisenerz in Styria. A ski resort with ski jumps in a nearby high valley – but also with certain values of the parents’ generation. Ski jumping wasn’t for girls, cross-country skiing was, that’s it. But cross-country skiing wasn’t for Iraschko, her sister already did that, and she was too small for it anyway – she didn’t want to run, she wanted to jump. The most unfair thing, she said two years ago: “All boys are allowed to ski jump, but not me.” Iraschko was still small, but had the willpower of a twelve-year-old who was just discovering the world. She didn’t give in until her mother gave in and then the coach of the ski club, “who,” as she later said, “is now my biggest fan.”
During the time Iraschko was jumping from the practice jumps, a major revolt was taking place. Iraschko wasn’t the only ski jumper who was initially frustrated. In Germany, too, young women had long been ski jumping, but serious series such as a World Cup or even World Championships were unthinkable. A signal had to be set. That’s why a group of 17 women, uninvited, surprised the organizers at the 1998 Junior World Championships in St. Moritz to crown the first female ski jumping world champion. The world association Fis gave in, the Finn Heli Pomell won – sending the 17 intruders home was probably too risky for the prestige of Fis. The men involved in ski jumping had actually provoked this kind of persistence back then. And someone like Iraschko fit the bill, even if she wrote her own ski jumping chapters.
She had married her long-time friend – and was developing again
She jumped out of the men’s equipment room with old boots and skis, but she made no demands. Despite the difficult conditions, she thrived. Iraschko had to go straight to a 40-meter jump; there was no smaller one in the high valley of Eisenerz. But she said to herself: “Once you’ve left the top, you can’t get out from the bottom because you can’t turn around anyway.”
However – the first jump was successful, including the landing. And Iraschko had gained confidence. Little by little she enlarged the inrun and became more and more confident until the jump was too small and she moved to the next higher one, just as it goes in the training of ski jumpers, until she mastered the largest women’s jumps at the time.
Aside from this usual search for boundaries in sports, she was moved by a second challenge. In 2013, Iraschko became Iraschko-Pride. She had married her long-time friend, and Iraschko-Stolz underwent another development. First, she realized: “I’ve always cared what people think.” On the other hand, she felt that behind the talk, what she didn’t hear could also be stressful. “Rumors are much worse,” she said, which is why she went on the offensive and explained what was actually none of the public’s business: “I thought I’d just say it myself, then no one could say anything anymore, and that’s how it was also.”
Some careers come to an end slowly, others reach late climaxes in the autumn of their careers. Iraschko-Stolz was 30 years old when she won silver at the 2014 Winter Games. She had already become world champion three years earlier, and yet that was just when things really started. She collected seven more world titles, including two individual bronze medals and various team podiums, before a phase of injuries slowed her down more and more.
Nevertheless, the memory of Iraschko-Stolz’s career also offers something spontaneous and radical, perhaps even a kind of sporting art, for example in 2003. The thing on the giant flying hill in Bad Mitterndorf had excited her and in retrospect she had a nice anecdote created for her type as a ski jumper and free-thinking character. Because Iraschko had joined the ranks of the leaders with the plan to set a world record. And actually: she reached 200 meters, flying at the age of 19. She had eclipsed everything that had ever been done in women’s jumping.
Invalid!, the rules keepers explained, it wasn’t a real competition, just jumping ahead, there are no world records. But they probably didn’t understand the intention of this spontaneous, unique ski jumper who was always looking for self-discovery.
