After a breathtaking race to catch up, Poland’s Piotr Zyla won the gold medal on the normal hill at the World Championships in Planica. Germany could also celebrate. Andreas Wellinger won the silver medal, Karl Geiger bronze.
“It’s incredibly awesome. I really hammered out with determination”, Wellinger said on ZDF. National coach Stefan Horngacher said: “Two medals, that’s incredible. The last few weeks have been tough. What the lads showed today was brute strength.” Even at the Four Hills Tournament, the DSV-Adler had disappointed across the board.
A surprising result was already indicated in the first round. Wellinger in second, Geiger in third and Constantin Schmid in fifth stirred up the world elite. Only Stefan Kraft from Austria jumped a little further, the Pole Dawid Kubacki broke through the German phalanx in fourth place.
Very tight first pass
However, the first round was an extremely close affair. The top ten were separated by just 4.7 points, so there were still plenty of medal candidates and the second round promised to be extremely exciting.
Even series winner Halvor Egner Granerud from Norway, who was struggling with a tailwind, still had good prospects in the race in tenth place. Wellinger in second place was only the equivalent of 40 centimeters behind the leader Kraft.
High tension until the end
And the second round kept what it promised. First, Piotr Zyla caused a big exclamation mark. The Pole, who was only 13th after the first round, only landed at 105 meters and put a lot of pressure on all the jumpers in front of him.
And they failed at first – for example Granerud, who didn’t come close to reaching Zyla’s distance, the Pole Kamil Stoch, the Austrian Michael Hayboeck or the Slovenians Timi Zajc and Anze Lanisek. But they also struggled with the ever-worsening conditions. Again and again the jumpers had to wait for unfavorable wind phases.
No way past Zyla
Constantin Schmid couldn’t cope with it either and dropped back to seventh place. Slowly it became apparent that everyone should bite their teeth at Zyla’s width. In the end, the Pole won a sensational gold and defended his title.
And the Germans were also happy about silver for Wellinger and bronze for Geiger. The leader after the first round, Stefan Kraft, was only fourth. Markus Eisenbichler rounded off the good German result as 13th.
For Wellinger in particular, however, a little fairy tale continued. After his cruciate ligament rupture in June 2019, the Bavarian went through a deep valley: he was not nominated for the 2022 Olympics, never stood on the podium again before he clinched his first World Cup victory in almost six years in Lake Placid on February 11 and now won silver.
High-flyer Raimund only spectators
Philipp Raimund, who was the only ray of hope from a German point of view at the Four Hills Tournament, only played the spectator role in the first World Cup decision. He lost the internal elimination on Thursday against Constantin Schmid.