Final jumper Karl Geiger (right) and his teammates celebrate bronze.
Photo: dpa/Daniel Karmann
It was minus 23 degrees in the ski jumping stadium in Zhangjiakou, but the joy of the German team about an unexpected bronze medal melted the snow. Karl Geiger, Markus Eisenbichler, Constantin Schmid and Stephan Leyhe jumped in circles like little boys. After the quartet had never finished in a medal position throughout the Olympic team competition, after a strong final jump from individual third-placed Geiger, they still managed to take third place – 0.8 points ahead of Norway, which is a tiny 44 centimeters.
“I finally wanted that fucking medal. I don’t even know what to do with all my emotions. The story from four years ago gnawed at me,” Eisenbichler explained afterwards. After the almost unbelievable happy ending, he didn’t want to stop screaming his happiness out loud. At the Winter Games in Pyeongchang four years ago, he was surprisingly kicked out of the German team, which won silver with Geiger and Leyhe, among others. This time the Bavarian from Siegsdorf had the biggest share in the long-awaited medal win with the day’s best distance of 139.5 meters in his jump in the second round of the competition.
“Eisei was madness. We were in sixth place at one point. You can sometimes lose faith in the medal. It was really on the razor’s edge, so I’m extremely happy about the medal,” said national coach Stefan Horngacher. Surprisingly, his compatriots from Austria won gold with the 36-year-old final jumper Manuel Fettner. In Team Austria, ski flying world record holder and multiple world champion Stefan Kraft finally won his first Olympic medal. And after an exciting duel they immediately won gold in front of the second-placed Slovenians.
It was an incredibly difficult competition in variable tailwind conditions. At half-time, the German team was ten points behind third place, but Eisenbichler just didn’t want to give up and encouraged his colleagues in the container again: “We were extremely far behind. But I said: We’re going out there now and get this medal. We just earned it.« Especially after the extremely difficult course of these Olympic Winter Games for the German ski jumpers, who are used to success. As number one in the national ranking and with Karl Geiger as leader in the overall World Cup, they arrived in Beijing as double favorites for gold. But in the individual competition on the normal hill, the Germans experienced a debacle with 15th place for Geiger. When the man from Oberstdorf had halfway deciphered the secret of the hill with his best jump in the mixed competition, the controversial disqualification for Katharina Althaus was followed by the “next board in front of the head”.
“I just didn’t know what to do anymore. I thought: Either you fly home now or you change something,” said Geiger. National coach Horngacher appealed to the team spirit in the biggest crisis of his tenure so far. Geiger reported that in addition to the phone calls to his wife Franziska and daughter Luisa at home, talking to his buddy Eisenbichler was particularly helpful. He started again from scratch: “Like a newborn chick – hatch the egg and get started.”
It helped: on the large hill at Zhangjiakou it got better from jump to jump – and Geiger surprisingly secured bronze in the individual competition. The Norwegian Marius Lindvik had won gold there. It was precisely in this duel against the Olympic champion that Geiger secured bronze in the decisive second round of the team competition. Geiger started the race 2.6 points behind and sailed 128 meters. Lindvik only managed 126.5 – almost half a meter too little. The rest was German jubilation.
With two bronze medals for the German ski jumpers and silver in the individual for Katharina Althaus, the flight team was still unable to fully meet expectations. Four years ago, Andreas Wellinger was crowned Olympic flying king with gold and silver in the individual and the silver medal with the team. This time Wellinger missed the qualification for the Winter Games, in which Karl Geiger and Co had a much harder time than expected with the previously unknown hills in Zhangjiakou.
All of that didn’t really matter to Markus Eisenbichler after the happy ending in the fridge. After a party with “one or two beers” he wants to go cross-country skiing with his buddy Lucas Bögl after the nervous strain of this team competition on Tuesday. And then he looks forward to returning home, where his brother Martin has just become the father of little Elias. Uncle Markus Eisenbichler brings an Olympic bronze medal as a very special souvenir: “I finally have a toy for the little one that he can suck on.”
