The Super Team is the newest competition in ski jumping. Two athletes from one nation form a team. At the premiere in Lake Placid, the German duo Wellinger/Geiger just missed the podium. Meanwhile, an old hero reveals a secret.
A few hours after his triumph in individual ski jumping at the World Cup in Lake Placid, Andreas Wellinger narrowly missed out on a possible second podium. At the men's premiere in the so-called Super Team competition, the two-time Olympic champion came fourth alongside birthday boy Karl Geiger. The third-placed Japanese were only 2.5 points ahead of the German duo (774.2) with 776.7 points. Victory went to Poland ahead of Austria.
In the new format, two athletes from each nation form a team. The competition, which is held in three rounds, is primarily intended to accommodate smaller nations that cannot provide a classic four-person team.
Wellinger had previously surprisingly won the first win of the season for the German ski jumpers and thus provided the team with a deep breath. On the Olympic hill he prevailed in front of the Japanese Ryoyu Kobayashi and the Austrian Daniel Tschofenig. He thus became the successor to former ski jumper Andreas Kiesewetter, who won the last competition in Lake Placid in December 1990.
After the victory on the Olympic hill, Kiesewetter congratulated his successor and revealed Wellinger's secret of success. "We hugged and laughed because I wished so much for him to be my successor. And he made it happen," said the 53-year-old.
"Before the competition Andreas approached me and said: 'You won here 33 years ago. How do you win here?' I replied that you should just relax and enjoy the jumping. And as it happens, he wins here," he chatted. "It's a really nice story." Kiesewetter has traveled to Lake Placid for the first time since his victory in December 1990 as the supervisor and physiotherapist of the Swiss jumpers.
In the Super Team, too, Wellinger was initially the better of the two German jumpers, achieving the highest mark in the second round with 137.3 points for a jump of 125 m. With his last jump of 122 m, however, he had to hand over the podium place to the Japanese, for whom Kobayashi jumped 128 m. Geiger, who turned 30 on Saturday, achieved his best distance of 122.5 m in the third round.
