Dhe new world champion Marius Lindvik stood in the outrun and roared out his joy. After four brilliant flights, the Norwegian ski jumping Olympic champion replaced Karl Geiger as ski flying champion and fulfilled his next gold dream in his home town of Vikersund. The dethroned defending champion Geiger still looked satisfied in his special gold jersey, he had given away the medals and a better perspective the day before. “I wouldn’t have believed Marius capable of it. But great respect that he brought it over like that. Pretty fat,” Geiger praised his successor Lindvik on Saturday.
For the 23-year-old Norwegian, who won individual gold on the large hill at the Beijing Winter Games, it’s the next big coup. Alexander Stöckl’s protégé shone over two days and four rounds with particularly high consistency and stability. With jumps of 232.5, 226.5, 230 and 224.5 meters he gave the competition for the Slovenian silver winner Timi Zajc and Austria’s world record man Stefan Kraft, who took bronze, no chance.
After a terrible first day of flying, Geiger was still able to improve. After 209 and 199 meters on Friday, it was 234.5 and 220.5 meters this time, in the trial run it even went over the 240 meter mark once. “That’s how you should start, that’s how you should have started yesterday. I really enjoyed the flights now. That’s really cool. It’s like an elevator – you pull up and get fast, awesome,” said Geiger on ARD. This time, however, the 29-year-old from the Allgäu was never in the Planica form, which brought him individual gold and team silver in 2020.
The other German ski jumpers only played supporting roles at the flight festival. Severin Freund finished 12th, Andreas Wellinger (14th), Constantin Schmid (17th) and Markus Eisenbichler (18th), who cursed heavily on Friday, also had a huge gap to the front places. “It just sucked, you have to say the hard word. It was really pathetic what I did,” Eisenbichler said on Friday about his first jump. It didn’t really get any better after that. “I couldn’t show what I’m actually good at here,” added Eisei.
Before the team flying on Sunday (4.30 p.m. / ARD), national coach Stefan Horngacher now has to quickly check off the tough individual defeat. “I think the starting position is not that bad. I hope that we can compete for a medal,” said Austrian Horngacher. His team captain is also confident. “I think I’ve found the flying form. Everyone is going in the right direction. Tomorrow we’ll knock something out,” said Geiger. Wellinger, on the other hand, was very angry that he had bad luck with the conditions in several rounds. “That really annoys me. Yesterday I was already a fool,” said Wellinger after the third round. In the end, the 2018 Olympic champion managed a 219.5 meter flight.
