Exuberantly, Andreas Wellinger and Karl Geiger jumped in circles and celebrated their surprise coup with German flags: The two Bavarians surprisingly won silver and bronze at the World Cup in Slovenia.
Wellinger was second only to Poland’s Piotr Zyla. Geiger celebrated third place. The flight duo ensured the brilliant German finale of an action-packed World Cup day.
Wellinger and Geiger gave the German Ski Association their third and fourth precious metal in Planica within a few hours. Previously, the German ski jumpers around Katharina Althaus had won gold as a team. Julian Schmid took silver in Nordic Combined.
National coach completely enthusiastic
“It’s incredibly cool,” said Wellinger on ZDF. The 30-year-old violinist spoke of an “intense day” and said: “It feels so good.” National coach Stefan Horngacher was also completely enthusiastic. “I’m completely exhausted,” said the Austrian. “To have two medals now is unbelievable.”
Wellinger jumped a strong 101 and 102 meters on the normal hill. Geiger made it to 100 and 101.5 meters. After the first round, Wellinger was in second place, Geiger was third. At half-time, Geiger announced the motto for the second round: “Attack in the second! It’s all very close together.”
He was right about that. After the first round, there was less than 2.5 meters between the leader Stefan Kraft from Austria and the tenth-placed top favorite Halvor Egner Granerud from Norway. National coach Stefan Horngacher spoke on ZDF of a “millimetre jump”. Eventual winner Zyla was 13th after the first jump.
Complicated season for DSV-Adler
The German success was surprising because the season had been complicated for the DSV-Adler. In the World Cup, the top performers of recent years, Geiger and Markus Eisenbichler, have only been able to keep up with the top jumpers in isolated cases. Two third places for violinists were not enough for the guarantee of success in recent years. The prestigious Four Hills Tournament went worse than it had in a long time. No German made it into the top ten jumpers.
Wellinger recently provided hope. It took the 2018 Olympic champion a long time to fight back after a cruciate ligament tear, form crisis and corona bad luck. After difficult years, the team’s joker recently celebrated two individual victories in the World Cup. With the appropriate self-confidence, he traveled to Slovenia. The 27-year-old showed impressively on Saturday what performances he is capable of again.
