Her father also celebrated a World Cup victory
Top German ski jumper has a famous brother
Updated 10/16/2025 – 2:13 p.mReading time: 2 minutes
She finished last season second in the overall World Cup. This winter, Selina Freitag wants to go to the top – and do the same as two family members.
With these genes, Selina Freitag couldn’t help but become a ski jumper. Germany’s best athlete last season was practically born with her future appointment.
Because her father Holger was already a successful ski jumper in the GDR. In the 1980s he celebrated a World Cup victory in Harravov, Czech Republic. He took part in the 1984 Olympic Games in Sarajevo, where he finished 35th on the normal hill.
However, his career ended early. During the Four Hills Tournament in 1984/85 he fell so badly in Innsbruck that he had to undergo multiple operations. After an attempted comeback in the spring of 1986, Holger Freitag had to end his career at the age of just 23. The now 62-year-old later studied medicine and became an orthopedic surgeon.
It wasn’t just her father who introduced Selina to ski jumping, but also her older brother Richard. He even celebrated more successes on the hill than his father Holger. The now 34-year-old became world champion with the team in 2015 and 2019 and won Olympic silver with the DSV team in Pyeongchang in 2018.
Richard Freitag celebrated eight individual victories in the World Cup – the first of which, like his father, did in Harrachov. In the 2017/18 season he came second overall. His best overall result at the Four Hills Tournament was sixth place in the 2014/15 season. The sports soldier ended his career in 2022.
Since then, all eyes in the sports-loving family have been on Selina, who won gold twice at the Nordic World Ski Championships in 2023 – once in the team and once in the mixed.
Richard once said in an interview about his sister, who is ten years his junior: “We have always talked and coordinated, but actually Selina went her own way with the trainers relatively early on.”
And further: “You can of course draw many parallels because our sport is ultimately the same. Nevertheless, there are different developments in the disciplines for women and men. That’s why it’s important that everyone goes their own way; and she did that pretty well.”
The 24-year-old has taken second place in individual jumping ten times since her World Cup debut in 2019. So she is very close to her first World Cup success. That should work this season, which begins on November 22nd in Lillehammer and climaxes with the Olympic Games in Milan in February. So that she can finally join her father and brother in the ranks of World Cup winners.