Four Hills Tournament: First Innsbruck, then Bischofshofen

The morning fog has long since disappeared from the Inn Valley, the Nordkette towers over one side, the mountain meadows offer snow-covered slopes for athletes. However, not everyone uses the day to do sports themselves. The big final atmosphere has just broken out in Innsbruck, people are sitting in front of the television or in one of the many sports bars and watching the qualification for the third competition of the 73rd Four Hills Tournament together.

Fight against superstition

This ski jumping weekend will last a long time, like a punctual jump with an extra long flight. Many fans are wondering whether things could get exciting again from a German perspective and whether the German jumpers can prove to be party crashers at the two Austrian home competitions. Because Pius Paschke, for example, can still use some of the strong form he showed in the weeks before the tour. Or whether Karl Geiger from Oberstdorf can improve again; He doesn’t like this third ski jump station in Innsbruck with its special characteristics, but he is very capable of learning. After Oberstdorf, Geiger’s form also showed improvement in Garmisch.

Paschke, who will be the World Cup leader until the New Year, is also likely to make another attempt to reduce the gap to the Austrian jumpers, who occupy the top positions in the overall ranking. After all, he is still second in the World Cup and sixth in the tour rankings; Although there is a fair gap to the podium, catching up by 16.6 points could be a realistic goal with two more competitions.

To do this, you have to set additional goals. The Bergisel ski jump is extremely narrow, it provokes mistakes, and the spectators, of whom more Germans than Austrians have bought tickets as of Friday, could become a factor. The German national coach Stefan Horngacher has adjusted his jumpers accordingly: “Winning a competition in Austria would be the coolest thing ever,” he told the news agency sid. Maybe Saturday could even be a greater liberation. Because somehow, says Horngacher, this dictate has become established less in reality than in the minds of athletes and spectators: namely, that the Tyroleans’ traditional and holy mountain of fate is now also, from a sporting perspective, a ski jump of fate for German ski jumping.

But Horngacher has made up his mind: fateful ski jump? “Nothing but superstition.”

Departure for Pongau

On Saturday evening the tour sets off on its longest journey from Innsbruck. It goes through the Eastern Alps, or by another route back via Rosenheim towards Salzburg. Before that, however, we turn south into Pongau, to one of the largest facilities in the World Cup, the Paul-Außerleitner-Schanze in Bischofshofen. The journey from Innsbruck takes around three hours.

There is plenty of time to go through your jump again in your head. Or to recap how the season has gone so far. Analyze your opponents and don’t allow yourself to be intimidated. Even if this Austrian team is so strong that even the very experienced Manuel Fettner, 39, was moved from the World Cup to the Continental Cup, i.e. to the second league of ski jumping. Fettner was in 13th place in the overall World Cup, which would be an excellent place for many jumpers.

Team Austria is ahead of the international competition in many respects. The superior ski jumpers benefit from a superior system. They are taught the crucial movements when they are young, which means they learn the correct posture for squatting, jumping and flying. Later, the material advantage increasingly becomes a decisive factor. Everything that is developed by technicians is tried out in the ski laboratories: especially on the subject of aerodynamics and the attempts by the athletes in the Austrian centers to optimize their approach posture. Bindings, shoes and the jumping wedges in the shoes are also constantly being developed.

The final hill of the tour

When Sunday begins in Pongau, enough Austrian fans will hike to the Paul-Außerleitner-Schanze, to the large Bakken, where the distance record is 145 meters. The home crowd will flock in anticipation to celebrate the huge lead this team now has in qualifying on Sunday and the competition on Monday. Five jumpers from coach Andreas Widhölzl’s team are in the top ten. Is there even a triple success? Or can individuals intervene, such as the Swiss Gregor Deschwanden? However, the Austrian Ski Association’s collective sense of success will hardly change.

Austria’s coach Widhölzl, on the other hand, probably knows best what is important in daily training: individual support, because everyone has different needs. With this credo, he quickly trained Jan Hörl, 26, and Daniel Tschofenig, 22, the two who usually end up on the podium after the competition, into tour favorites.