Karl Geiger is also the great hope in German ski jumping in 2022/2023. In his column at sport.de he writes about the upcoming tasks in Canada.
12 o’clock local time Frankfurt am Main, I take the last steps of the gangway that is placed at the Boeing 747 and I’m already sitting comfortably in my seat of the machine that will now fly us to Montreal.
For ski jumpers it is a constant take-off in the World Cup winter, the take-off today is the west runway at Rhein-Main Airport. The plane is slowly going up at 250 km/h – time to think about the past World Cup weekend in Willingen: 20,000 enthusiastic spectators were not deterred by the bad weather and offered a unique backdrop – a real ski jumping festival, which for me personally had the desired distances and hoped for placings after taking a break from the World Cup.
While my colleagues on the Kulm were pursuing ski flying, I turned to the basic elements of ski jumping on the normal hill in Oberstdorf and reloaded the automation, so to speak – with success. The intensive training at home paid off.
I have a better feeling in the air again, the flights are more stable again and the distances are there. In the first individual competition, I was able to show what I’m capable of with jumps of 137 and 135.5 meters, which then led to 5th place, which I was very happy with. The fact that the training in Oberstdorf had paid off was already evident on Friday in the mixed competition.
Geiger: “Quickly check off” second jump
In a team with Selina Freitag, Katharina Althaus and Andreas Wellinger, I was able to contribute to the result, a podium place, with solid jumps – a good start in front of the home crowd, which was then confirmed by my top five placing in the first individual competition.
The second jump didn’t succeed due to the interaction of several factors, the jump wasn’t quite clean and the wind wasn’t particularly helpful at the crucial moment. A competition that was easy to check off, but also didn’t throw me off track.
In the meantime, we have broken through the cloud cover and, after a long right-hand bend, set a course for Canada. Several hours later we will land in Montreal to continue our journey by coach to Lake Placid, the famous site of previous Olympic Games.
I’m curious about the conditions on site, actually minus 32 degrees were measured there last week. As a German team, we deliberately arrived a little earlier in order to use the days for training on the hills there.
I hope to continue my upward trend in the Canadian World Cup competitions!
Best regards
Karl Geiger