Justin Lisso is one of the great ski jumping hopes of the future at DSV. In his column for sport.de, the 23-year-old now reports on his first experiences with ski flying in Austria.
My first World Cup this season and that means: ski flying at the Kulm.
Ski flying – another dimension of jumping. Well prepared by teammates and coaches, I approach the first day of the competition. 6:00 a.m. getting up, 7:00 a.m. breakfast, 8:30 a.m. football-tennis in the hall and jumping imitations on the trolley. Nervousness: not present.
9:30 a.m. Departure to the ski jump, already in the bus you can tell that the spectators are in a good mood; for them, too, the long jumps are a feast for the eyes, a real spectacle. The chairlift at the Kulm takes the jumpers up in seven minutes, a difference in altitude of around 350 meters to the foot of the diving board. Nervousness: not present.
Standing on top of the tower for the first time is an incomparable experience. Nervousness: slightly increasing.
You don’t know what’s coming and ski flying isn’t trained in that sense by any ski jumper – and then the first jump: 207 meters. I acknowledge that I’ve personally never jumped that far off a hill, but I’m busy with other things.
I notice how my body is full of adrenaline. It feels like you’re in the air longer than it is objectively. The forces in the air sometimes have a completely different effect than in normal ski jumping and it takes courage and experience to pull down a jump for a long time. Nervousness: more than before the jump.
I’m happy with the distance, as are my coaches. I notice how everything in me “reworks”, the adrenaline creeps out only slowly. The qualification is more difficult for me, a mistake after the jump lets me land at 144 meters. I’m paying a lot of money, realizing that I need three to four more jumps on such a layout to be able to read it correctly and adapt the jump to it.
The second day of the competition is similar. Here, too, I feel that, due to lack of experience, I do not pull the jump the twenty meters further than it could have been pulled.
I am impressed by the requirement for the jumper. A psychological demand, a mental energy effort from take-off to landing. Stefan Kraft, an experienced ski flyer, demonstrates how it’s done: Respect for this achievement!
I am completely back on earth in Oberstdorf. It was fun, the experiences will take me further and the joy of the next “normal” World Cup comes to the fore. I hope to confirm in Willingen what I consistently managed to do in the COC Cup, namely to jump well.
I’m ready to show what I can do!
Best regards
Justin Lisso