Ski jumping - Wellinger wins at the start of the tour and makes fans dream
With a true ski jumping gala, Andreas Wellinger has impressively fired up hopes of the first German Four Hills Tournament victory since Sven Hannawald's triumph in 2002. The 28-year-old came out on top on Friday in Oberstdorf ahead of second-placed Ryoyu Kobayashi from Japan and Stefan Kraft from Austria. Wellinger jumped a formidable 139.5 and 128 meters in front of 25,500 enthusiastic spectators in the Arena am Schattenberg.
"Awesome!", Hannawald commented euphorically on Wellinger's first jump on ARD. National coach Stefan Horngacher was also delighted. "Flawless," he said. "Hats off, he did really, really well." Youngster Philipp Raimund also performed well and finished sixth. Local hero Karl Geiger was unlucky with the conditions in the second run and ended up in seventh place after finishing fourth at the halfway point.
But the big stage belonged to Wellinger. The Bavarian had never won a competition at the tour before. Overall, he celebrated the sixth individual World Cup victory of his career. Geiger had previously won the last German one-day victory in the four-act ski jumping spectacle in 2020 - also in Oberstdorf.
Wellinger has achieved what many no longer really believed he could: After difficult years marked by injuries, he is once again the German team's flagship athlete. This winter, the fun sports enthusiast has been jumping more consistently than he has for a very long time. In eight World Cups before the tour, Wellinger reached the podium four times. The 2018 Olympic champion only failed to make it into the top five jumpers once.
The start of the tour put the whole of Oberstdorf in a state of emergency. Even in the morning, fans with German hats and flags paraded through the streets of the otherwise tranquil spa town, which is normally home to around 10,000 people. Even without snow, the ski jumping fans celebrated a big winter party.
Five hours before the start of the competition, the first fans secured the best seats in the arena, which was sold out with 25,500 spectators. They cheered on the jumpers with loud shouts of "Ziehhh". They shouted out the names of their heroes. "This is full alert", Hannawald commented enthusiastically on the atmosphere.
Austria's Kraft had started the competition as the top favorite in the battle for the prestigious golden eagle. The 30-year-old, who already won the tour once in 2015, has a commanding lead in the overall World Cup. He won five of the eight jumping events before the tour - including at the tour dress rehearsal in Engelberg, Switzerland. With third place at the start, he is also still right in the race.
Other top stars on the scene cannot make the same claim. Norway's Halvor Egner Granerud and the two Poles Dawid Kubacki and Kamil Stoch, who have won the tour in recent years, already have no realistic chance of winning. Defending champion Granerud was even eliminated in the first round after a jump of just 105.5 meters.
One German jumper was spared this. From the Horngacher team, Pius Paschke in eleventh place and Stephan Leyhe in 24th place also scored World Cup points.
Information on the Four Hills Tournament Results Four Hills Tournament The overall World Cup standings News on ski jumping from the German Ski Association
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Source: www.stern.de
