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Katharina Althaus leads her team to the gold medal
Photo: ANTONIO BAT / EPA
Led by individual world champion Katharina Althaus, the German ski jumpers won gold in the team competition at the World Championships in Planica.
Althaus, Selina Freitag, Luisa Görlich and Anna Rupprecht finished on the normal hill with 843.8 points ahead of Austria (831.1) and Norway (828.6).
"Gold just inspires, I was happy to take the momentum with me," said Althaus two days after her individual triumph.
National coach Maximilian Mechler was relieved.
"I was very nervous.
But the girls jumped really well.
I'm just happy and done," he said on ZDF.
Althaus writes history
The DSV quartet had already won gold at the World Cup premiere in 2019, but at the home World Cup in 2021 in Oberstdorf it was only enough for fifth place.
With the next gold medal, Katharina Althaus has secured her place in the history books: she is the first ski jumper in World Championship history to collect six gold medals.
In the list of the most successful World Cup distance hunters, she climbed to fourth place behind the Austrians Thomas Morgenstern (eight titles), Wolfgang Loitzl (seven) and Gregor Schlierenzauer (six).
Only her former teammate Carina Vogt (2015, 2017) and Althaus himself (2019) had previously won two gold medals at a World Cup.
In Planica, the woman from the Allgäu still has two more chances – the next on Sunday in the mixed competition (5 p.m.).
In mixed, Germany won World Cup gold in 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2021 – Althaus was part of the team in three out of four competitions.
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