What a swatter for Karl Geiger: Germany’s ski jumping star wants to attack again after the dream of overall victory at the Four Hills Tournament in Innsbruck shattered early on – and experiences a small catastrophe. He missed Wednesday’s competition with a botched jump.
Germany’s best ski jumper Karl Geiger completely messed up the qualification in Innsbruck and was surprisingly eliminated. The 29-year-old jumped just 108 meters on Tuesday and was eliminated in 51st place. The competition on Wednesday (1.30 p.m. / ARD and Eurosport) will therefore take place without the man from Oberstdorf.
For Geiger, who was fifth in the ranking of the Four Hills Tournament, all hopes of a good place in the overall ranking are gone. In the outlet, he hung his head in disappointment when he saw the result on the monitor. On the rest day he had formulated a declaration of war. And now that. “It was a mess, I can’t really put it into words yet, it was hard, I didn’t catch the jump at all,” said Geiger on ARD. The knee pinched a bit, “but it was okay, I don’t want to look for excuses now.”
No other German made it into the top ten in the preliminary round either. Hopeful Philipp Raimund ended up in eleventh place. Poland’s Dawid Kubacki secured the qualifying victory ahead of compatriot Kamil Stoch and Slovenia’s Anze Lanisek. Overall leader Halvor Egner Granerud (Norway) did not get past 13th place.
On the difficult hill at Bergisel, the Germans have often lost the tournament victory prematurely in recent years. At the 2019 World Championships, when Markus Eisenbichler won gold ahead of his friend Geiger, things went much better and he ended up in 16th place. “I really like the hill itself and try to develop step by step,” said Eisenbichler, who recently worked with had to struggle with severe form problems. His love for the striking facility is “still the same”.
Andreas Wellinger (15th) and Stephan Leyhe (17th) also made it into the top 20. Constantin Schmid ended up in 41st place, Pius Paschke was 45th. In the overall classification, the DSV-Adler are already far behind Granerud after two competitions . In sixth place, Wellinger is already 32 meters behind and therefore has little chance of the first overall German victory since Sven Hannawald in 2002. Geiger, currently fifth overall, will fall far behind.