The 2025/26 season offers medals, an eagle and world championship titles: ski jumper Andreas Wellinger would win the tour if he could choose. However, the 30-year-old is worried that the credibility of his sport has suffered.
Ski jumper Andreas Wellinger is ready for the 2025/26 season with many sporting highlights. The 30-year-old from Upper Bavaria is set to aim high not only at the Four Hills Tournament, but also at the Ski Flying World Championships and the Winter Olympics in Cortina d’Ampezzo and Milan.
If he could choose, Wellinger would take the tour victory, “because I already have the Olympic gold at home,” he says as he dresses the DSV winter athletes. “The tour is simply the highlight that happens every year. And I’ve already come close twice.” The special thing about it is that everything has to work perfectly over the four competitions. And “perhaps a little bit of luck, that would be something if the time comes on January 6th.”
Distance to Expectations from the outside
As always, the pressure of expectations on one of the most successful German ski eagles is great. But he doesn’t want to accept it: “The only pressure I can put on myself is the one I can put on myself. I know the expectations from outside, but they don’t reflect mine.” Wellinger knows where he stands at the moment. And that there is still a lot to do before the tour, the Ski Flying World Championships or the Olympics.
Before the big events begin, he and his team colleagues will fight for World Cup points for the first time at the season opener in Lillehammer. Wellinger then hopes that he will compete “in the right form”. Then he wants to spend the winter building up the necessary self-confidence for the highlights. But speaking of Lillehammer: ski jumping and Norway – there was something there…
The suit scandal is still having an impact – Wellinger is criticizing it
Despite the anticipation of everything that is to come in the Olympic winter, Wellinger still sees a shadow that is present Nordic World Ski Championships in Trondheim in the form of the suit scandal placed over his sport.
The two Norwegians Marius Lindvik and Johann André Forfangwho were at the center of the scandal over manipulated jumpsuits in their home country, got off with light sentences. Lindvik, who became world champion on the normal hill ahead of second-placed Wellinger, can even keep his title. Of all things, the two Norwegians will be there again at the start in Lillehammer.
Wellinger sees the processing critically. He doesn’t believe that the two of them didn’t know about the unauthorized changes they had made to the suit. “I find it extremely questionable. That’s why we have the situation the way it is. I think it will keep us busy for a long time,” said the 30-year-old.
New rules, new trust – Wellinger: “We have them credibility recovered”?
For the athletes it is now about regaining the trust they have lost. “I think we have had a very big drop in the credibility of our sport. Have we regained credibility with the way it has now been processed?” asks Wellinger before the start of the new competition period. A question that is probably not that easy to answer.
As a result of the scandal, the world association FIS has reacted and changed the rules, is working with new material controllers and is relying on stricter tests. However, the jumpers didn’t yet know exactly how this would all work.
Source: BR24Sport on the radio November 20, 2025 – 4:55 p.m
