There are only two podium places for the German ski jumpers in the statistics in the current World Cup winter when the ski jumpers travel to Lake Placid. There Andreas Wellinger achieved the first German victory in a long time - because the Olympic champion jumped away from everyone in the second round.
Andreas Wellinger gave the German ski jumpers their first World Cup victory of the winter. The 27-year-old jumped 129 and 125.5 meters in Lake Placid in the USA and won ahead of Ryoyu Kobayashi from Japan. For Wellinger it was the fourth individual World Cup victory of his career and the first podium finish in an individual World Cup since November 2018. Austria's Daniel Tschofenig was third.
Karl Geiger finished eighth on his 30th birthday, making him the second-best German. A week and a half before the start of the World Championships in Planica, Slovenia, Markus Eisenbichler also achieved a decent result with his tenth place. Kobayashi set a hill record with his jump of 136 meters in the first round. "It's unbelievable what happened today. I can't really put it into words yet because I'm just overjoyed and have to realize it first," said Wellinger. "I've fought brutally the last few weeks, the last months, the last years."
A cruciate ligament rupture in June 2019 threw him off track for a very long time. Wellinger temporarily slipped out of the World Cup team and was not nominated for the 2022 Winter Games in China. Most recently he had flashed his class from earlier days again and again. But it wasn't enough for a real breakthrough. "The fact that the leap onto the podium is first place again just feels so great," said Wellinger.
Wellinger, who won two gold medals on the normal hill and with the team in Sochi in 2014, was only in fifth place after the first round after a small mistake at the take-off - but with a strong second jump, the winner of the qualification surprisingly left still everyone else behind. Halvor Egner Granerud and Dawid Kubacki, who skipped the winter, had nothing to do with victory at the Olympic facility in 1932 and 1980 after the first round because of the wind. Granerud failed to equal Janne Ahonnen's record with his 7th place. The Finn once had 13 podium finishes in a row.
For the German team, which had only achieved two podium places in the current World Cup winter and produced its worst result in many years at the Four Hills Tournament, Wellinger's victory was the first World Cup victory since January 23, 2022: At that time, Geiger won two consecutive competitions in Titisee- new town
The German ski jumpers had recently shown that they had at least made it back to the top of the world: a few weeks after, for the first time in this millennium, no DSV ski jumper made it into the top ten at the Four Hills Tournament, they were at the most recent World Cup competition in Willingen Geiger (5th), Philipp Raimund (9th) and Wellinger (10th) again three Germans jumped into the top 10. Wellinger had already impressed in fourth place in ski flying at the Kulm in Bad Mitterndorf.
The former German star jumper Karl Geiger himself is slowly stabilizing again. After a fifth place last weekend in Willingen, he also showed a slight upward trend in Lake Placid with jumps of 127.5 and 120.5 meters. "It was a really nice ski jumping day," said the man from Oberstdorf. "It was great fun."
With the strong start in Lake Placid - in the evening there will be a team competition - the DSV jumpers also fueled the hope of at least a conciliatory World Championships at the end of a complicated season: "As I know the team", ski jumping legend Martin Schmitt said in an interview with ntv.de orakel after the Four Hills Tournament, "they will come one step closer to the top of the world. And then at least one medal should jump out."
