Barely two and a half years after her overall World Cup victory, Sara Marita Kramer is going through the most difficult phase of her career. After a social media post, the Austrian ski jumper gives sport.de honest and remarkable insights into her mental life.
From Apeldoorn in the Netherlands, Sara Marita Kramer’s life took her to the Salzburg region and from there to the world’s top ski jumping event. She dominated the final phase of the 2021/2022 winter at will and jumped a hill record of 146.5 meters in Chaikovskiy, a hill record that was not thought possible, which is exactly why it went viral.
She was able to maintain this form into the winter of 2021/2022 and deservedly won the overall World Cup – even though she missed two competitions because of a false positive corona test. Shortly before the big highlight of the season, the Olympic Games in Beijing, she became infected with the virus and tearfully announced her exit from the Olympics via social media.
It was only two and a half years later, namely at the first World Cup ever on Chinese soil, that she was allowed to travel to the place that was once the destination of her dreams. “This felt incredibly strange. Being in this place where I wanted to be so badly in 2022 was difficult to process,” the 23-year-old recently wrote in a social media post.
Two and a half years later, Sara Marita Kramer is a different ski jumper and a different person than she was in her heyday. She has now finished 15th in the overall World Cup twice and has been waiting for a World Cup podium since the start of the 2022 season.
“My mindset is not the same as it used to be. And I really believe that in order to perform at your best, you need that fire within you – that big fire, those big dreams that drive you day and night, no matter what “That’s what separates the outstanding athletes from everyone else. At some point in the last few years, I lost this fire,” she admitted on Instagram, thus not at all fulfilling the cliché of this platform, which is otherwise a perfect world gets to see.
“I was wondering what else I should write. Nothing I’ve written would have reflected what I feel. It’s difficult to put into words, but I tried to put it into words and did a pretty good job of it “How I feel most of the time. That’s the reality. I can’t write that I’m happy with Platz Conversation with sport.de on the two-night tour in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
Since she made her World Cup debut in February 2017, a lot has happened to her. It is noticeable that the years 2023 and 2024 in particular have done something to her: “To be honest, I have to say that the last few years have always been back and forth. I was in a really good mood in the fall and when I went to… When I started winter, I was no longer on the right track.”
Kramer wants to “back to the top” with the right mindset
Above all, Kramer is concerned with the pursuit and search for inner satisfaction; her path always leads her to the inner mindset – she has no longer been concerned with the sheer results. “There are days when I’m really happy with how I’m working and when I notice that I’m making progress. On those days I’m also happy with 25th place. And then there are days where I do better but I’m not happy about them “I’m leaving the ski jump,” she said sport.de in the Olympic ski stadium in Partenkirchen.
But the question inevitably arises as to where the way out of this proverbial dead end is. In the last World Cup season 2022/2023, she took a break from competition for several weeks. She now describes this path as a “comfortable decision because it leads back to the comfort zone.”
But this path is out of the question for her shortly before the turn of the year 2024 to 2025: “It’s important for me to stay in it now and accept the situation as it is and thereby learn to deal with it. Otherwise I’ll never learn .”
With 15 World Cup victories and a further eight podium places, she is still statistically one of the most successful ski jumpers ever and therefore “naturally wants to get back to the top.”
But as unusual as her journey through life as a native of the Netherlands to the top of the world in ski jumping was, the lessons that Sara Marita Kramer is currently having to learn are just as normal: “For this path back to the top, I have to accept that sometimes things don’t go well and then But stay positive in your head and look ahead.”