Out of the dream: Despite a good performance, Pius Paschke lost his last realistic chance of overall victory in the Four Hills Tournament on the German “Schicksalsberg”.
While the new overall leader Stefan Kraft led the next Austrian triple triumph in Innsbruck, eighth place was not enough for hopeful Pius Paschke.
“Everyone is the master of his own luck. The others are extremely good at the moment and are pushing each other,” said Paschke on ARD: “Something is missing for me, there’s not quite the ease. And then a few meters are missing.”
After finishing fourth and ninth at the German stations, Paschke flew at 128.5 and 123.5 m on Bergisel; after the first round he was still in seventh place. The 34-year-old remains sixth in the overall standings, but the lead is further away before the finale on Monday in Bischofshofen (4.30 p.m./ZDF and Eurosport) and is also well occupied.
The Four Hills Tournament awaits an exciting finale
The first contender for the gold eagle is now Kraft, who won on Bergisel ahead of Jan Hörl and Daniel Tschofenig. In the overall ranking, Kraft now leads by a narrow margin with 887.1 points, ahead of Hörl (886.5) and Tschofenig (885.8). Everything points to the first tour victory by an Austrian in ten years. For the DSV Adler, however, the lull that has been ongoing since Sven Hannawald’s Grand Slam in the winter of 2001/02 will continue.
In front of 22,500 spectators in the arena, which was sold out for the first time since 2016, including a good half from Germany, national coach Stefan Horngacher’s team once again fell short of expectations. In addition to Paschke, only Andreas Wellinger (13th) and Philipp Raimund (15th) made it into the points.
Karl Geiger (34th), eighth in the overall ranking before the competition, missed the second round, as did Felix Hoffmann (44th) and Adrian Tittel (45th).
“We’re not giving up and will really accelerate. Pius isn’t that far away,” Horngacher said before the competition. Paschke, who had won five of the first eight competitions of the season, delivered – but again it wasn’t enough to attack the podium.
Best Innsbruck result for Paschke
After all: Paschke made it into the top 25 in Innsbruck for the first time in his career. Horngacher had recently dismissed the phrase “Fate Mountain” as “superstition”, the falls of Severin Freund (2016) and Richard Freitag (2018) as well as Geiger’s setbacks in 2020 and 2021 and 2023, however, speak a different language. A year ago, Wellinger lost his overall lead in Innsbruck.
On the other hand, it’s all sunshine and roses in Team Austria, which was not deterred by speculation about a supposed “miracle suit” and hidden ties and achieved its first triple victory in Innsbruck since 1975. Now even six ÖSV Adler ended up in the top twelve. From a purely statistical perspective, Kraft is almost there: In the most recent 25 tours, only the Norwegian Daniel Andre Tande lost the overall victory as the leader after Innsbruck in 2016/17.
Meanwhile, no one from the German team wanted to take part in the whispers about the Austrians having a material advantage, which was hardly supported by any facts. “The fact is that all athletes who stand on the podium must have excellent material, otherwise you won’t be there,” says DSV sports director Horst Hüttel on t-online: “We have complete trust in the FIS that everything is here is examined in great detail.”
Things continue for Paschke and Co. on Sunday, when the qualification (4.30 p.m./ZDF and Eurosport) for the big tour finale takes place in Bischofshofen. Hannawald is still the last German winner there too – and at the moment there is little to suggest that that will change.