Only 30th place: Karl Geiger did not show himself in the Oberstdorf form in the qualification for the New Year’s competition in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. But the German hope knows the problems. For Eisenbichler, who was weakening recently, things are looking up again.
No New Year’s Eve cracker, but many good resolutions for the new year: Karl Geiger got off to a bumpy start in the second stage of the Four Hills Tournament and only finished 30th in the qualification from Garmisch-Partenkirchen. “It wasn’t the clean blade I was hoping for,” said Germany’s greatest hope for overall victory: “I have to do better tomorrow.”
The man from Oberstdorf, who finished fourth at the start of the tour in his home country, did not get past 119.0 m on the Olympic hill and was not yet a candidate for victory in the New Year’s competition on Sunday (2 p.m. / ARD and Eurosport). “I wanted to build on Oberstdorf, I didn’t succeed,” said the 29-year-old: “There are reasons for that, I have to work on that.”
The Polish World Cup leader Dawid Kubacki won the qualification with 140.5 m ahead of the Slovenian Anze Lanisek. Tour leader Halvor Egner Granerud took sixth place in spring-like temperatures of around 13 degrees. The best DSV eagle in front of 9000 spectators was surprisingly only 22-year-old Philipp Raimund from Oberstdorf, who finished ninth, one place ahead of Constantin Schmid from Oberaudorf. “I’m happy because I don’t really like the chance that much,” said Raimund.
The recently weakening Markus Eisenbichler showed increasing form as 14th. “All three jumps today were good, I’m very satisfied. I knew things would go uphill again,” said the six-time world champion. Stephan Leyhe (14th), Andreas Wellinger (19th), Felix Hoffmann (28th), Martin Hamann (29th), Pius Paschke (37th) and Luca Roth (49th) are also tied. However, like other jumpers, Wellinger struggled with the rather bumpy track: “Maybe that’s why I tensed up a bit.” Geiger, on the other hand, said: “I don’t want to put it on the track.”
A small preliminary decision could already be made in the competition on Sunday. Granerud has a whopping 13.4 points – the equivalent of 7.5 m – ahead of Poland’s Piotr Zyla in the overall tournament ranking. A lot, but not exceptionally much: Springer traveled to Garmisch seven times with a larger cushion, of which only the Austrian Thomas Morgenstern (2007/08) ultimately did not win the tour.
Since Sven Hannawald at his legendary “Grand Slam” in winter 2001/02 no German ski jumper has won in “GAP”, it is the longest dry spell on the four hills. The DSV-Adler have been close to victory recently, but regularly: In the past five years, Germany has come second four times, twice by Markus Eisenbichler (2019 and 2022), once each by Richard Freitag (2018) and Karl Geiger (2020) – mostly it was a good start into the new year.
And how does the old one sound? “Drink wheat beer until we can’t stand up,” Eisenbichler joked: “No, we’ll sit comfortably together. I’m one who’s really tired. I’ve slept extremely badly the last two nights because I’ve got so many thoughts gone upside down.”