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Stephen Horngacher
Photo: IMAGO/Ulrich Wagner
Ski jumping national coach Stefan Horngacher prematurely ruled out an overall victory at the Four Hills Tournament.
"We're a long way from winning the Tournament.
We no longer need to worry too much about overall victory.
We have to make sure we get the Bergisel under control," said Horngacher in the morning at the German team hotel in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, with a view of the next station in Innsbruck.
Andreas Wellinger in eighth place and Karl Geiger in eleventh place were well behind the elite around the Norwegian tour leader Halvor Egner Granerud.
"Farthest Away"
In the overall ranking, Geiger is fifth and Wellinger sixth.
The gap to Granerud is more than 30 meters, even the podium is about ten meters away.
»It's almost certainly nothing with the overall victory.
There are still a few stations to come and a World Cup.
You can't always throw all your nerves overboard," said the 29-year-old violinist.
Compared to the past three years, he himself is “the furthest away” on this tour.
Nevertheless, head coach Horngacher is "satisfied" with the interim result, as he emphasized.
“We have the situation that two or three athletes are ahead of the rest of the world.
It's not just us that we hunt them down," said Horngacher.
In addition to Granerud, he also referred to Slovenian Anze Lanisek and Poland Dawid Kubacki.
The last German overall victory dates from the winter of 2001/02.
At that time, Sven Hannawald won.
On Wednesday (1.30 p.m., TV: ARD and Eurosport) the third competition will take place in Innsbruck.
aha/dpa