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Karl Geiger (from left), Anna Rupprecht, Markus Eisenbichler and Katharina Althaus win gold for Germany
Photo:
Daniel Karmann / dpa
Andreas Bauer couldn't believe it.
When the four German athletes brought jump after jump steadily and far down in the second round of the mixed team competition, the ski jumping national trainer of the women grabbed the hair that had grown a little longer due to the corona and shook his head.
Gold for the German Ski Association, the first title at the home world championship - and then an even more surprising one.
The German team was not one of the favorites.
Sure, Karl Geiger had won silver in the individual on the normal hill the day before.
Markus Eisenbichler is among the best in the world as second in the overall World Cup.
Katharina Althaus is only 24 years old, but has already won numerous medals at major events.
Anna Rupprecht is jumping the strongest season of her career.
And yet, after the impressions of this World Cup so far, the starting position was such that a good competition could perhaps be enough for bronze.
Bauer's third home world championship
It's a special World Cup for Bauer.
He was born in Oberstdorf, runs a country house with holiday apartments in the market town and can walk to the Schattenbergschanze.
Bauer was an active jumper at the first World Championships in Oberstdorf in 1987, and in 2005 he was the Nordic Combined ski jumping coach for the second edition.
So now the third world championship in Bauer's home country and the 57-year-old routine coach couldn't slow down his ambitions in advance.
"For me as a coach, the main priority is always to jump for medals at major events," Bauer told SPIEGEL a few days before the start of the World Cup.
He had brought Althaus and Carina Vogt - the World Cup specialist - into play as possible medal candidates.
It turned out differently.
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Andreas Bauer
Photo:
Hendrik Schmidt / dpa
Althaus - like Bauer and Geiger also from Oberstdorf - jumped to tenth place as the best German in the individual.
Vogt even fell to 30th place and had to give way in the team competition.
There it was enough for Althaus, Rupprecht, Juliane Seyfarth and Luisa Görlich to only finish fifth.
The German ski jumpers, who were spoiled for success, seemed a long way off from the top of the world.
All the more astonishing was the fact that Althaus was able to immediately indicate the direction with her first jump of 104 meters, the second-furthest in the first round.
It was the initial spark that neither Bauer nor Stefan Horngacher, the men's national coach, had expected.
"I'm extremely grateful for the girls' achievements," said Eisenbichler.
The strong competition makes too many mistakes
The German outsider role was not only due to the jumpers.
First there was Geiger's low form, which he could only shed in the week before the World Cup.
Eisenbichler, on the other hand, had lost the timing both in training and in the first competition in Oberstdorf, he regularly jumped too late and gave away crucial meters.
The main reason for the pessimism was the strong competition.
Norway provided the most balanced team with Maren Lundby, Silje Opseth, Robert Johansson and Halvor Granerud.
Slovenia competed very confidently with world champion Ema Klinec and bronze winner Anze Lanisek.
And Austria currently has the best female jumper in her ranks, Marita Kramer.
But things also turned out differently than expected for the opponents - which can happen again and again in a sport that is so dependent on external conditions.
Norway ended up in silver, 5.2 points behind, because Granerud and Johansson each showed a weak jump.
In third place among the Austrians, the two men, Stefan Kraft and Michael Hayböck, also failed.
And in the Slovenian team, world champion Klinec gambled away all medal chances with a jump to 90.5 meters.
As a result, the German mixed team won World Cup gold for the fourth time in a row.
That's ski jumping.
Icon: The mirror
