German women ski jumping at the Olympics: “It hurts very, very much”

Katharina Schmid sat on a white bench behind the run-out of the large hill in Predazzo, she cried and buried her face in her hands. Her family was there, friends too. But then they had to watch as Schmid, two-time Olympic silver medalist and seven-time world champion, simply flopped onto the landing hill after 96.5 meters. Over and over, their last competition at the Winter Games, after just the first round. Place 42. Later, the 29-year-old said, continuing to drag her emotions through every interview: “It’s hard that it ends like this. It hurts very, very much. I would have liked to have had a second jump to say goodbye here a little differently.”

After her jump, she waved to the audience and bowed. It wasn’t just her loved ones who wished the German flag bearer another uplifting moment, like at the opening ceremony a week and a half ago in Predazzo. “I’m glad that all my family and friends are there, I want to go to them first. I think I need them today,” said Schmid. It was an evening where many tears were shed.

Schmid, who has done so much for German women’s ski jumping, who brought it further into the public eye through her successes after Carina Vogt’s first Olympic victory, is quitting after this season. She wants to see something else than just ski jumps; from April onwards, the family in Oberstdorf should finally be more in the foreground. Now Schmid has also become a symbolic figure for the poor Olympic form of the German jumpers.

They traveled home on Monday feeling like they had fallen into a huge hole right at the climax. In the overall World Cup standings, Selina Freitag, Agnes Reisch and Schmid are in fifth, seventh and eighth place, with podium places in a row. In the normal hill competition in Predazzo, Freitag and Reisch still came seventh and ninth, but in the mixed doubles they missed bronze together with Philipp Raimund and Felix Hoffmann by exactly 1.2 points, i.e. 60 centimeters.

“We are bitterly disappointed, I don’t need to sugarcoat anything,” says national coach Kuttin

Even then her performance was too fluctuating; the first jump on Friday was far too short. On Sunday evening on the large hill, the women experienced the lowest point with the second Olympic victory of the Norwegian Anna Odine Stroem, who had already won on the normal hill. Schmid said goodbye after the first round completely frustrated, Reisch ended up in tenth place, Friday was 17th, Juliane Seyfarth 23rd. “We are bitterly disappointed, I don’t need to sugarcoat anything. We will learn a lot from it,” said national coach Heinz Kuttin.

The DSV jumpers were particularly looking forward to this premiere, the first Olympic women’s competition on the large hill. They actually had better chances of winning a medal than the men around Raimund. But then one problem after another came. Schmid couldn’t get to grips with the jump at all during training; she struggled with not getting a feel for the facility at all. The large hill with its very flat inrun is actually unforgiving; if you make the slightest mistake when taking off, you won’t be able to fly at all.

Reisch has been struggling with back and knee problems for a long time and was unable to do any strength training for six weeks. “I can sit for five minutes without a backrest and then I have to lie down. As soon as I’m done with the interviews here, I have to lie down. When I’m driving there it hurts, when I press on the jump table it hurts,” she said on Sunday evening. She also skipped her training jump on Saturday morning and gave her honest reasons: “I got my period today. Then I’m always super anxious.” Reisch also received disrespectful and baseless comments on the Internet for her open approach to the important topic of periods in top-class sport, but that certainly didn’t serve to brighten the mood.

And Freitag, who was probably Germany’s biggest hope for a medal, was at a loss after her jumps: “I have no idea why things aren’t going well. I was totally relaxed today, much more relaxed than on the small jump,” said the 24-year-old. “I was at my peak physically and in terms of strength. It’s hard to go home without a medal and not so satisfied after such an initial performance.”

The balancing act of finding the right balance between load and relief should be included in the error analysis

Kuttin had two planning options in January. To tackle the stressful journey to the competitions in Asia shortly before the Winter Games in order to collect more World Cup points and jumps for preparation. Or prepare for Predazzo in peace at home. Others, like the now successful Norwegians, skipped the long journey. “We pulled it off,” said Kuttin, adding that people are generally always smarter afterwards. But the travel routes leading up to a major event – ​​and the balancing act of finding the right balance between stress and relief – should also be included in the error analysis.

In any case, as sports director Horst Hüttel contritely stated, the results are very unsatisfactory: “We are not satisfied. The girls were physically fit, the team atmosphere was really good. But from the training here it slipped away from us.”

The quartet left fairly quickly on Monday, ahead of the men’s team competition in the evening. Just get away from these bad luck in Predazzo. The idea of ​​traveling to Cortina or Milan to watch competitions there was also shelved. “You need a bit of air now,” said coach Kuttin, “At the end of this week there are two conditioning units, then jumping again. We still have a lot to do this year.”

This also applies to Schmid, who is particularly looking forward to ski flying in Planica, the last World Cup. After that she will let everything go, her entire great career. And who knows whether she won’t return in another role soon. Discussions were ongoing with SC Oberstdorf about a full-time position in the youth sector, said DSV sports director Hüttel. And if all the trainer licenses work out, then “all doors would be open” to her in the association. But in Predazzo, Schmid, like everyone else, must have underlined Agnes Reisch’s sentence on Sunday evening, which summed up the German women’s results well: “I don’t want to hear anything about ski jumping for a week.”