Outgoing national ski jumping coach Stefan Horngacher: If necessary, he also helps with sewing

A hotel bar in the center of Engelberg, it is the weekend of the World Cup before Christmas, traditionally the dress rehearsal before the opening competition of the Four Hills Tournament in Oberstdorf. But instead of analyzing the jumps of his best jumpers of recent years, Karl Geiger and Andreas Wellinger, as usual, the point is that Horngacher ordered the model duo to take a week-long break from the World Cup due to a form crisis. Communication between him and the established ones had recently been difficult; he could hardly approach them in conversations.

Instead, the late bloomers Felix Hoffmann and Philipp Raimund are now jumping into the international elite. In Engelberg, Hoffmann came second once and third once, Raimund came fourth twice. And Horngacher seems to take an almost mischievous joy in accompanying them. “Felix is ​​a quiet, introverted guy. He doesn’t say much. You need a magnifying glass so you can look into him,” he says. Raimund, more of an extroverted type, is also there in the media round at the hotel bar. “I’m not saying that if I win the tour, I’ll become the next pope,” says Raimund and laughs.

Horngacher looks over at him, raises an eyebrow, frowns. Like a father who wants to ground his son a little. That characterizes him quite well, this warm-hearted, tough, detail-obsessed, sometimes grim-looking worker from Bad Häring in Tyrol, who would like to leave a few traces in the snow when he leaves.

Horngacher was an outstanding ski jumper himself. As a boy in the 1970s, he built small snow jumps to emulate idols like Toni Innauer. Until he was trained in the club in Wörgl and at the Schigymnasium Stams, Austria’s training ground. With Austria, Horngacher became world champion in the team in 1991 and 2001 and Olympic bronze medalist in 1994 and 1998. It wasn’t enough for the big individual successes, also because he suffered from a recurring viral infection for years. But even back then he was a leading figure in the ÖSV team with his expertise.

In 2006, after years of training as a trainer in his homeland, Horngacher moved to the German Ski Association (DSV) at the base in Hinterzarten; he became Martin Schmitt’s home trainer and then assistant to the then national coach Werner Schuster between 2011 and 2016; They celebrated the 2014 Olympic victory in Sochi as a team. When he became head coach of the Polish jumpers in 2017, his most successful time began, marked by the World Cup titles with the team in 2017 and 2019, Kamil Stoch’s individual Olympic victory in Pyeongchang in 2018, his overall victories at the Four Hills Tournament in 2017 and 2018 and his triumph in the overall World Cup in 2018.

In spring 2019, Horngacher returned to DSV – and to his family in Titisee-Neustadt. Now he was head national coach, but he was denied the greatest successes like in Poland, apart from Karl Geiger’s victory at the 2020 Ski Flying World Championships.

So he’s currently fighting for his legacy, even though he doesn’t want to take stock yet. “I have so many other things to do than think about: Yes, what was that like? This is the last time I’m here and there. I don’t even think about that. I don’t give a damn.” The results will be taken in Planica after the last ski flying competition at the end of March. “That’s the end of it all.”

Horngacher is currently only concerned with one thing: “Where do I want to go with the team?” With a team, mind you, whose leading figures Geiger and Wellinger are completely out of shape.

The coach knows that he has to deliver, the Four Hills Tournament, the Ski Flying World Championships in Oberstdorf, the Olympics: his last winter as head coach for the DSV will be in the public’s shop window in the next two months, and perhaps it will be his most difficult. Horngacher says this much: “You want to leave the store in good condition. That’s always the most important thing.”

The shop, of course, is not just the athletes, but the entire team, the assistants, young trainers, technicians, seamstresses. “I had a difficult task,” says Horngacher: “I took over an intact team from Werner. You have to keep it intact first.” He thinks the team is still pretty intact.

One of his closest companions had a moment on the phone two days before Christmas Eve. Someone who was initially Horngacher’s competitor on the hill and then became his student. Martin Schmitt, the world champion and Olympic champion, raves about Horngacher’s “clear views, his analytical understanding, his great affinity for technology and materials”. Why can’t I feel the ski over the stem? How can you change the curvature of the slats so that they lie better in the air? Such questions concern Horngacher. And if a suit didn’t fit, he simply put together a new one himself.

Schmitt, today’s DSV junior coach and Eurosport expert, comes up with an anecdote: “In 2007, I was allowed to jump in the Continental Cup in Garmisch shortly before the Four Hills Tournament. But the suit didn’t fit properly. So Heinz Kuttin and Stefan set about sewing it at night, and the new suit was hanging there in the morning.” Schmitt won the competition.

And beyond the measurement, the analysis, the teaching: what kind of person is Horngacher? “Certainly not the softest person to deal with, but being rock hard would be an exaggeration,” says Schmitt: “He also has a feeling for it, always has an open ear. And he can also be very funny.” Blessed with a fine, dry sense of humor.

In the bar in Engelberg, Horngacher now crosses his hands on his lap, the left one is often in motion, the thumb rubs over the index finger. Small signs of tension. Playing with the media was never his favorite pastime, it’s just part of the job.

This is also why he cleared the air at the DSV outfitting in Nuremberg at the end of October, even before the first question could be asked. Horngacher emphasized that he wanted to communicate this right at the beginning of the season, “so that there is clarity, it is also easier for the athletes. And for me the circle closes with the Olympic Games. I started my first season in Predazzo, as a diver at the 1991 World Championships.”

What Horngacher didn’t say: How things went at the ski jump, which will be the Olympic venue in February. He won team gold with Ernst Vettori, Andreas Felder and Heinz Kuttin for Austria. So it’s a very big circle that’s closing.

Horngacher feels that it is time to go because he feels that his influence is dwindling. “If you are always there and do this for seven years with all the athletes: your authority is a bit limited.” Two years ago he made the decision to stop after the Olympics and clear the way for someone who would bring a fresh impetus.

Horngacher has ideas about what could happen next for himself, but he keeps them to himself. There will be discussions in one direction or the other, but at the moment everything is “undiscussed”. The father of three children – he has a son from a previous marriage – only knows one thing: that on April 1st he will be at home in Titisee-Neustadt, not far from the Hochfirstschanze, with his family. With his wife Nicole, who was once Schmitt’s physical therapist, son Amadeus, 18, a young ski jumper, and daughter Dana, 20, a young biathlete.

It will be an arrival after a farewell. In a place in the southern Black Forest where Horngacher has put down deep roots. His companions say he wants to stay there until he is old.