Equality on the hill: “Womb tears when landing” – The hard path of the ski jumpers

When almost all of your childhood dreams, which once seemed not only worlds away but impossible, have come true, a big question remains: What now? Or also: what else is to come? This is what happened to Katharina Schmid in the summer. As a woman, she finally got permission to fly for the first time in March, to ski fly. She also won World Championship gold on the normal hill, with the team and the mixed. “I achieved so much last winter that it will be difficult to top it. “I’ve already thought about what new goals could be,” she says. “But I really want to ski fly again, I want more of it.” The goal is too big to stop. Two weeks driving and camping through Iceland gave her strength and energy for what was to come.

It is not the fulfillment of her last remaining childhood dream. There was already great rejoicing among the ski jumpers when the news made the rounds in April: their fight for their own Four Hills Tournament had been successful, and it was supposed to happen this winter. Things turned out differently because co-organizer Austria still had organizational problems. And yet this season we are once again taking a step forward on the remarkable but often very tough path to equal opportunities, which not so long ago gave rise to absurd sayings. Katharina Schmid, two-time Olympic silver medalist and Althaus until her wedding in the summer, experienced almost every one of these steps herself.

Squats with weights: standard for ski jumper Katharina Schmid

Quelle: picture alliance/SchwabenPress/Guenter Hofer

If you want to understand the development of ski jumping, you just have to look at the 27-year-old’s career. “I kind of grew with the sport,” she says. “Looking back, it’s incredibly great that I was able to take part in so many jumping for the first time. A bit surreal.” For the woman from Oberstdorf, the fight for more equal opportunities was always a motivation to train harder and keep going. Always keep an eye on the next step in the development of the sport.

And the older, the more experienced and more successful she became, the more she raised her voice. “I have the feeling that, especially in the last few years, I have played a part in making it move forward,” she says, “that I can help the sport grow.” On the one hand, through her achievements, getting the publicity . Schmid is one of those jumpers who have continuously raised the level of sport at the top. “I have also always said publicly what we are fighting for and have put pressure on things to happen faster in recent years.”

As early as 1911, the first woman took part in the men’s competition

On the one hand, a lot has happened – in all areas. More divers, higher quality, more young talent, more and higher-class competitions, more attention, more television time, higher prize money. And one causes the other. The last three points in particular remain room for improvement. In terms of performance, the development is enormous. “We need a little more travel than the men, but then we can reach the same distances,” says Schmid. “And that’s actually the cool thing about ski jumping, that you can’t always tell whether it’s a woman or a man.” Women are no longer ridiculed. However, it wasn’t long ago that things looked different.

It’s been a long time: Katharina Schmid at a summer competition in 2011

Source: picture alliance/dpa/Grzegorz Momot

The first documented ski jump by a woman dates back 112 years. Back in 1911, Countess Paula Lamberg took off from the jump in a long dress at the men’s competition in Kitzbühel and landed after 22 meters. But ski jumping remained a men’s affair; women only jumped in the supporting program.

It wasn’t until 1999 that they got their own events. At that time, Schmid was just three years old. And three years later she ventured off a children’s ski jump in Oberstdorf for the first time. Not because she had seen women’s ski jumping on television – the competitions took place unnoticed by the public – but because she enthusiastically followed the tournament’s opening competition in Oberstdorf and one of her brothers started.

Crazy saying from association boss Kasper

That she was almost alone among boys? Didn’t scare her off. Stupid comments? There was. But bounced off her. Their parents? Had no objections. “They never thought I would play a typical girl’s sport anyway,” she says. And her parents saw what the then Fis President Gian Franco Kasper had said as nonsense. The boss of the world association claimed at the end of the 1990s that the force of the landing could cause the uterus to rupture. “If you think about it now, it’s crazy that this saying wasn’t that long ago,” says Schmid.

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She even used to jump against boys at the Bavarian school championships. “There were no girls in my year,” she says. Her dreams back then: to take part in World Cups and the Four Hills Tournament, to jump from the large and flying hills. There was none of this for women at the time – so there was no female role model for her to emulate. “I had men as great heroes, especially Simon Ammann,” she says. “But an autograph card from Ulrike Gräßler was also quickly added.” In 2006, Ammann landed his first Olympic double coup. Gräßler won silver at the first World Cup for women in 2009 – Schmid was twelve years old at the time.

Despite the World Cup premiere, women’s ski jumping continued to be ridiculed. The differences could not be overlooked – in quality, in breadth, in everything – but where would it come from if it had not been promoted for a long time or was even unwanted?

The first Olympic champion in the history of ski jumping: Carina Vogt

Quelle: picture alliance/dpa/Krasilnikov Stanislav

In the first World Cup winter of 2011/2012, Althaus was already involved – at 15 years old, not yet at the top, but still there. “Something very special. The first World Cup!” she says. “In hindsight, I’m proud that I was able to be there at such a young age.” When Carina Vogt finally became the first Olympic champion in ski jumping in 2014, Schmid cheered on her teammate on site and gained experience – and then won Olympic silver herself in 2018. The premiere on the biggest stage of world sport in Sochi in 2014 was certainly the most important milestone, as the Olympics significantly boost the necessary processes.

Permission to fly allowed after a long wait

But everything took time – including until the world association trusted the jumpers to jump from the large hill. Only occasionally, in the 2018/2019 season finally in a third of the World Cups. Schmid had been pushing for this for a long time. In the winter of 2026, women will jump from the long bakken for the first time at the Olympic Games. The monster beacons are even more blatant: the ski flying jumps. Schmid, who has one of these monsters, which only exist in the world, on her doorstep in Oberstdorf, has long felt ready for this challenge.

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But she had to wait until March of this year and fight with the other top jumpers for her dream of flying. In Vikersund/Norway the time had come: the best 15 were allowed to sail into the valley. Another milestone. The Slovenian Ema Klinec showed with 226 meters that the female athletes at the front are ready and that their assets are no smaller and their safety risk is no greater than that of the men, albeit in a larger starting field. In total there were six flights beyond 200 meters, Schmid landed 1.5 meters ahead.

Her first coup: Schmid won Olympic silver at the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang. She will follow up in 2022

Source: picture alliance/Michael Kappeler/dpa

What was not yet counted as a World Cup there has this status for the first time this winter. And Schmid doesn’t want to miss the chance. “Of course it was great to be able to fly for the first time, but to be honest it wasn’t as fulfilling as I thought,” she says. “I know there is more and I really want to feel this feeling even more intensely.” And for that to happen, I have to keep going – with my career and further out in ski flying. “I talked to the men a lot and they knew what I meant,” she explains: “The feeling only comes when you fly well over 200 meters and get another boost at the bottom and gain altitude again.” In a sense, that second air.

“How Long should we wait?”

Will Schmid continue until she can fulfill her last childhood dream, that of the prestigious Four Hills Tournament? She does not know. “I was hoping that it would finally happen this season,” she says. While the men are already on their 72nd tour this winter, the women are at zero. The German Ski Association (DSV) is ready, but the process is still ongoing at the Austrian Association. And for quite a long time. “Of course we know the reasons, among other things there are contracts that cannot be changed so quickly, and yes, sometimes things don’t move fast enough for us athletes, but how long should we wait?” asks Schmid.

The idea of ​​organizing a tour outside of the traditional Austrian towns of Innsbruck and Bischofshofen was met with little approval. And so there is at least a two-night tour for the women with Garmisch-Partenkirchen (December 30th) and a New Year’s jump in Oberstdorf – the opposite of the men. “Having another competition at home is special,” says Schmid happily, “because I was always excited about it as a child.” It makes the disappointment of another tour a little easier.