New Year’s jumping
Two DSV opponents disqualified
01/01/2025 – 3:34 p.mReading time: 2 minutes
At the New Year’s jump in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, the opponents of two German ski jumpers are disqualified. This gave another DSV eagle hope – at least temporarily.
High tension right on the first day of the new year: Nine of the ten German ski jumpers had qualified for the New Year’s competition of the 73rd Four Hills Tournament in Garmisch-Partenkirchen on Wednesday and had to go into tricky duels, but the opponents of two DSV Adler were then disqualified.
First Felix Hoffmann started as an underdog against the Pole Aleksander Zniszszol and jumped to a decent 124 meters with a tailwind. Zniszczol jumped 1.5 meters further – and ultimately lost the duel with Hoffmann after taking the other values into account. A short time later, Zniszczol was disqualified.
The duel between Philipp Raimund and the American Kevin Bickner was similar: Here Raimund was just ahead with 129.5 meters to 125.5 meters, then made the victory perfect with the scores.
A short time later, Bickner was also disqualified – which meant that Hoffmann and Raimund’s teammate Stephan Leyhe made it into the top five “lucky losers” for a time. In the end, Leyhe, like Markus Eisenbichler, Constantin Schmid and Luca Roth, did not make it to the final.
Disqualifications in ski jumping are due to problems in checking the material: checking the jumpers’ suits has been a hot topic for some time. An inspector measures the athlete after jumping and makes a recommendation to the competition management as to whether this athlete should be disqualified or not.
A ski jumping suit must not be too large so that the wing area in the air is not increased. In addition, the suit must be made of only one material. This must be between four and six millimeters thick and have maximum air permeability. But that’s not all, because the suit has to fit the body. In an upright position, there should be a maximum of one to three centimeters between the body and the suit for men (two to four centimeters for women).
A much-discussed problem is that viewers have no insight into what these controls look like. There is a lack of a certain transparency and also a lack of time (read more about this here).