Eva Pinkelnig is a ski jumper, exceptional athlete and a role model for many. At the Nordic Ski World Cup, she and her teammates have already fetched silver. And that also because it stays with herself and its values - despite all resistance and critics.
Anyone who hits Eva Pinkelnig always hits her wide grin – with the ski jumper sitting on the bar, also patiently interviewing questions in the pouring rain from Trondheim or shoulder her skis off the ski jump. Pinkelig is professional and so, not surprisingly, she comes with a ray of an interview with the sports show.
In the blue training suit, she looks solved-in the middle of the hustle and bustle of the Nordic Ski World Cup. The Austrian is a ski jumper, spokeswoman for the athletes and a role model for many. But in one role she feels most comfortable: “I love to be the Eva “says Pinkelnig in the Sportschau Wintersport-Podcast and grins almost involuntarily.
But she doesn’t want to commit herself on one of the other rollers. Peeing is open, curious – and does not want to set any limits, up and down the ski jump. But the 36-year-old wants to be a model. “It simply means that all the fights that I have fought in the past 36 years, every tear that I shed was valuable when it helps other people”she says. The fights also fought Pinkelnig because hardly anyone believed her career as a ski jumper.
Ski jumping only hobby, late profession
As a five -year -old, she spoke fascinated to jump with skis, her dream of ski jumping or flying, but she fulfilled almost twenty years later. “I got the chance to learn ski jumping as a hobby”reveals pinky. Two years later, the hobby is her job and you start in the World Cup. “This is a crazy story”she says and grins. Today, it helps her to better classify things that your career path is not linear, the love of sport was not always easy.
“I know where I come from. And – at the age when my teammates are now, I sold skis in a sports shop”says the Austrian. The fact that she later wins the overall World Cup, becomes athlete of the year, medals at World Championships, all of this would not have dreamed of retail.
Values as a compass
“That’s why the grin on the beam when I sit at the top. With everything I had to experience, but also experienced, I am just sitting here, sitting here and doing my best. I enjoy ski jumping.” With this conviction, she also showed it all those who have no longer believed the late beginner’s great career in ski jumping. “I learned to listen to my own in the inner voice”says Pinkelnig.
They are values that their family, “the grandma”have given her. The safe network, the love that you grew up in the country – it can still be noticeable, it is still noticeable, almost tangible when the 36 -year -old tells of her environment. That gives her security, helps you when she moves off, from everything that is so important to her. A woman with principles is peeing – now she is uncompromising.
“Bitter tears of knowledge”
But that, she reveals, was not always like that. “I started to define my value as a person, over placements.” She neglected her actual values, redefined. “These were very bitter tears of realization. I had to admit that I had completely deviated.” The bitter realization, it arises in peeing after severe falls and injuries, finally a spleen tear in 2020. Because no one was allowed to visit in the hospital during the Corona pandemic, the exceptional athlete remained a lot of time to think on her hard way to recover.
“I believe that sometimes things have to break that something good can arise from it”she says about the challenging time today. Pee -like has not broken on it either. The struggle for survival and finally to return to the ski jump, but she thrown it back to her foundations and changed her view of things. She is grateful that she can still do what she loves and has that gratitude on a World Cup morning in the rainy Trondheim becomes firmly in her rituals between awake and coffee. “I can jump a World Cup here, with everything I have already experienced”she says. “Megageil.”
Pinkelnig fits in no drawer
The fact that her way to ski jumping in general, but also for the big competitions such as a World Cup, another, was perhaps not more ordinary, likes Pinkelnig. “It is quite good when we break role models every now and then”she says convinced. She has never really fit in drawers anyway. “I don’t have to.” And then it is back – the grin that belongs to Eva Pinkelnig, like the exuberant jubilation after a strong jump, the clear words in interviews and the conviction that not every way is a straight line.