Ferdinand Bader: Cup or Hospital

Created: 12/19/2021 Updated: 12/19/2021, 9:40 AM

From: Dieter Priglmeir

Bader's flying style: “Dive forward to transfer the twist to the ski.” © Imago

The ski jumper of SC Auerbach liked to test the limits.

That's why he broke the Konchen, but also hill records.

And then there was that super jump in Sapporo.

Definitely a member of the illustrious circle of "100 greatest athletes of all time."

Auerbach / Lenggries - He has overcome his fear of heights and survived twelve broken bones.

He also doesn't mind the discipline necessary for ski jumping.

And yet Ferdinand Bader decides a few days after the greatest success of his career to get out of competitive sport.

Even the national coach cannot change his mind.

That is the story of Ferdinand Bader.

He is considered to be the best ski jumper that the Auerbach Ski Club has ever produced.

He became German team champion, set hill records all over the world, won the Continental Cup (COC) and achieved a top five place in the World Cup.

And that as a late starter - at least when it comes to success.

Because he is already on skis at the age of one and a half. Father Siegmar goes with him up a hill in Garnzell (near Vilsheim): “Grandma is downstairs. Just drive around the molehill. ”So that's how you learn to ski in 1983? “That wasn't normal even then,” says Bader, “but totally brilliant”. He also tried it with his children, "but at first there was hardly any snow, then they didn't feel like it."

Bader lives with his wife, an art historian, in Lenggries.

“Not only did I find my dream woman, I was also allowed to marry her,” he says.

You keep his back free when the sports scientist is out and about explaining the Bader principle (mobility, breathing, dynamics, nutrition, rhythm).

“I give seminars and workshops for the big animals in large companies.

I make people healthier and try to guide the world towards a better one, ”he says.

This is what drives the sports scientist, book author and nutritionist.

And at home?

He simply wants to convey to his three children (6, 5 and 2) the joy of exercise and being outside: "I don't want to turn them into competitive athletes."

His father had this idea earlier, although the mountain and ski guide quickly realized: Son's linnet does not have the muscle mass necessary for alpine sports. “But he discovered my fun with jumps on skis and drove with me to Auerbach for the Rudi Brauner Memorial Jumping as a spectator. There he simply said that this would be something for me. "

So the ten-year-old becomes a member of the Auerbach Ski Club, where Hans Steinbauer trains him.

His first jump?

"I had so much adrenaline that I cried once afterwards," says Ferdinand Bader.

The challenge begins with the ascent to the 20 meter hill.

“I was afraid of heights.

When we were at the Olympic Tower, I clung to the wall.

Looking down wasn’t at all. “Now should he not just look, but jump?

He does it - then pure happiness overwhelms him.

Not because of the technology or the flight phase: "That was a test of courage and the prospect of repeating it again and again."

Auerbach's ski team: Bader (2nd from right) with colleagues and coaches Hans Steinbauer (left) and Rudi Heilmaier.

© Limmer

The enthusiasm grows with every jump: down in the shot, the compression, the moment at the take-off, landing. Bader is infected and does everything for jumping, cycling the twelve kilometers to Auerbach. "Two to three times a week, in every season and with the big sports bag - those were further units before and after training." His father makes it clear to him: "You can cycle to Auerbach alone, I will support you in the competitions." To do this, Siegmar Bader drives across Germany. "He stayed on the bus and I and the team in the hotel." The effort is getting too big, the way out: a sports boarding school.

Bader's ski jumping successes are not enough for acceptance in Oberstdorf. “I was fifth at the German youth games, nothing more. I've won regional championships several times, but the competition is manageable. At that time I wasn't a candidate for a national team. "

Because Bader is still listed as a Nordic combined athlete at the age of 16, coach Thomas Müller suggests him for a place in the boarding school in this area. “I never enjoyed the station wagon. In ski jumping I was ahead, and in cross-country skiing I was passed backwards, ”says Bader. Of course he'll be exposed. Andreas Bauer, responsible for the pure ski jumpers, is annoyed, but takes the boy with him to Reit im Winkl for the Germany Cup. And the combined athlete without a team reference wins the special jumping. Now Bauer knows: the guy can do something. And above all: what can he do if he is trained properly?

Bader is really a career changer. “Up until then my father had written me the training plans, but he wasn't a sports scientist. However, he always encouraged my coordination. Carabiners and ropes were already hanging over the cot. I had a sense of balance early on. ”This and the jumping exercises at the neighboring riding stables - Bader is convinced that this is the key to his distinctive feeling in flight.

But there are also these gaps. In the weight room he is asked how many pounds he is doing his squats. “50.” - “A lot of additional weight.” - “Why additional? That's just how heavy I'm. ”No, Bader admits he never had a dumbbell in his hand, but he changes that - just as he absorbs the entire training method. Sometimes he exaggerates. The coaches take the hall keys away from him so that he doesn't practice secretly again. "I always had the feeling that my environment was slowing me down."

It's easy to get into the B-team anyway. Successes in the COC competitions, the most important competitions after the World Cup, are inevitable. Good placements were never the motivation for him. “They were necessary to stay in the Bundeswehr sports promotion group.” The fun of jumping and testing the limits - that's his world. His motto: cup or hospital.

That doesn't always go well. In the summer of 2002 Bader hit his head in a mat jump in Trondheim after a rollover at 70 meters and was unconscious for ten minutes. “After that I only spoke English, even with my teammates.” The doctors diagnosed a herniated disc in the cervical spine - “shortly before paraplegic”. The season seems to be over, "but that is exactly what gave me a new looseness," he says. On the flight to the three-week US tour “it clicked, and it became clear to me: 'I'm just good'.” In Westby, he decided to start two hatches lower than the competition during training. He jumps as far as no other, packs up his things and also foregoes the trial jump on the day of the competition. The first round: hill record! The second jump: another record.A few days later, in Ishbeming, too, he jumps as far as no other. He returns with two wins, a second and a third place, is also on the podium twice in Norway, then the season is over. Although he only contested ten of the 18 competitions, Bader finished fourth overall. One more competition and he would have ousted Michael Möllinger. “I would have liked to have had this medal,” says Bader.

However, he voluntarily renounces any other chance.

National coach Reinhard Heß brings him to the DSV team for the World Cup final in Planica.

“It would have been my first ski flying.

In all honesty: I was scared, "says Bader today.

“Technically I would have been able to do that, but due to the injuries from the summer I was through with this season.

For me it was the wrong time for the first jump on the largest hill in the world. "

His first World Cup appearance comes a year later on the Kulm.

The premiere, the media interest, his ambition - not a good mix.

Bader botched his qualification jump over motivated.

Hess radio: "Well, Ferdl, you can't qualify for the World Cup with jumps like this." Bader will never forget that.

"I was still so young and would have needed a more sensitive approach."

Bader gets his first World Cup points in Liberec. At the COC in Lillehammer he wins gold and silver again. In Vikkersund he pulverized Andi Goldberger's hill record (204 m) with 213 meters. Little did he suspect that the joy of jumping will be taken away from him in the next season, because the regulations are changing. "The suits became thinner," explains Bader: "Due to the smaller surface, the ski jumpers could no longer jump forward as usual in order to transfer the twist to the ski." Stability and safety are now in the foreground. "When you're used to jumping forward with all your might, it feels like jumping backwards."

In addition, a minimum weight is stipulated that Bader falls short of, "but not because I was starving". He has to put on six kilos. Impossible with the leg muscles, which are already pronounced. Only the muscles remain with the previously “poorly educated” (Bader quote) poor. The problem: This changes the body's center of gravity. His feeling of flight, once admired by Ewald Roscher, is gone.

But Bader bites through. He jumps in the 2004/05 Four Hills Tournament. "But you can get there relatively easily thanks to the national starting positions." The February days in Japan are more important to him. While shopping before jumping in Sapporo, he shows a teammate a camera. “I'll buy it when I jump into the prize money.” Then the competition: “Snowfall, in the trial run the jumpers stumbled in rows,” says Bader. "Problems on the approach, a single jerk in the air, plus the gusts", for him it is clear: "The key is to get to the take-off in a stable manner and to maintain the center of gravity." He watches the competition for a long time, almost missing it own jump, but now he knows: Everyone starts to falter at this blue pole, you have to do this here, this here. Everything has now been analyzed. Now is the time.Bader takes the jump, has the center of gravity where he wants it, updraft, great height. The jump goes well beyond the K point. Telemark landing. Everything perfect, or how to refine it today: "It's my only jump that can be seen on Youtube".

Bader 2005: at the triumph in Sapporo. © Private

And it's second in the first round. Only Roar Ljökelsöy, two-time ski flying world champion, is even better. In the second round, Bader crosses the table as the penultimate jumper. A decent attempt, in the end the man from the Auerbach Ski Club came in fifth, flies overjoyed and with 2000 euros in prize money. But that's where it gets dark. The press writes of "Bader's luck in snow flurries", of "jumping in the wind". Bader regrets that nobody noticed the real performance. “Driving stably through the radius - a Höllwarth or Morgenstern couldn't do that.” The experts know that, and the World Championships in Oberstdorf will take place in two weeks. Martin Schmitt, who finished seventh two months earlier, and Bader, the jumper of the hour, remain for the last free place.So Bader advantage? He would have found a direct duel at the World Cup in Pragelato to be fair. But he gets a completely different invitation: for the COC in Iron Mountain. Nothing with WM.

It never gets steeper: Bader in the inrun of the Schattenbergschanze in Oberstdorf.

© Imago

Bader is deeply disappointed, speaks of the "marketing decision in favor of purple helmet".

He also remembers the previous summer when the DSV only occupied seven of the eight starting places for the Grand Prix in Zakopane and left Bader, the number eight, at home.

“The political decisions against every result list disillusioned me,” says Bader today.

This also affects the results.

In the COC, which he has dominated so often, he hardly makes it into the second round.

In 2006 he officially announced what he had decided in his head a year earlier: No more ski jumping.

Bader 2021: entrepreneur and father of a family.

© Private

National coach Peter Rohwein can't stop him, but his successor Werner Schuster brings Bader back as assistant coach for the 2010/11 season. Because he doesn't “want to do the Hansl for the trainer”, he “prefers to help from outside”, writes a concept for the World Cup in Oslo, takes care of diagnostics, training planning and mental training. Bader is also working for the DSV before the winter games in Sochi. He himself developed a device that measures the edge angle of the ski. No other nation has anything like it. Bader is convinced that this knowledge advantage is also one of the reasons for the rain of medals in 2014. After that, his work for the DSV is done. The ski jumping world has become a little too small for him. Or as he puts it: "On the one hand, I have an insatiable thirst for knowledge,as far as health is concerned and, on the other hand, the great need to share this knowledge with people. "

In our series

Ferdinand Bader ranks 36th as “100 greatest athletes of all time”.