Awesome, the medal party continues happily: ski jumper Katharina Althaus flies to fourth medal at the World Championships in Planica. After three gold medals, the woman from Oberstdorf now takes bronze on the large hill. Although Althaus misses a record, he still celebrates.
Katharina Althaus jumped up and down with joy after her bronze coup, the Snow Queen from Planica also celebrated her third place like gold: After three titles in a row, the woman from Oberstdorf missed a perfect World Championships with victories in all competitions, but that was heartfelt for her doesn't matter. "I'm just happy," said the 26-year-old at the end of a memorable World Cup full of records. Four titles for a ski jumper at a World Championships would have been a novelty.
The national coach was correspondingly proud. "Congratulations to Katha, unbelievable. To show such jumps in these conditions today and to be third - great respect," said Maximilian Mechler on ARD: "That was incredibly strong of her."
Surprisingly, Althaus had to leave the triumph on the large hill in an exciting competition to Alexandria Loutitt, the Canadian has only celebrated one World Cup victory in her career. Silver went to defending champion Maren Lundby (Norway). After 120.5 meters in the first round, Althaus was in third place, secured by a jump of 128.0 meters.
Team World Champion Selina Freitag, fourth from little Bakken, had to settle for 19th place on Wednesday. Pauline Hessler made a decent World Championship debut and finished 26th. Anna Rupprecht had already failed in qualifying on Tuesday after a fall. For Althaus, a winter fairy tale ended with the bronze flights in the Valley of the Schanzen. The girl from Oberstdorf won gold in the individual, team and mixed events on the normal hill. Now she just missed the world championship record of three gold and one silver set by Thomas Morgenstern from Austria in 2011.
Nevertheless, the Olympic silver medalist in Slovenia with her world titles number five, six and seven had risen to become the sole record world champion - only Morgenstern was more successful with eight titles for men. However, the feat of four gold medals for Germany at a World Cup is reserved for combined athlete Johannes Rydzek, who won in Lahti in 2017.
Defending champion and Olympic champion Lundby delivered an impressive comeback. The Norwegian took a break for the entire winter of 2021/22 due to weight problems and has not had a top ten result in the World Cup since then. In Planica, however, she presented herself in her old form and in the first round improved the nine-year-old hill record by four meters to 139.0 m. "These are the jumps you live for," said Lundby. The competition was characterized in the first run by constant changes in inrun length. Mechler was already clearly critical at half-time. "You would have had to wait a little longer for everyone to jump under the same conditions. But such rounds happen at world championships," said the national coach, referring to similar problems in the past.
For the women, the World Championships are over, but for the men around Andreas Wellinger and Karl Geiger there are still two chances of a medal in individual on Friday and team on Saturday. Then the German World Cup record of four times ski jumping gold, set in 2019 in Seefeld, could be broken.
