Germany’s ski jumping team wins gold in the mixed competition at the World Championships in Planica. Individual World Champion Katharina Althaus, World Championship third Karl Geiger, Selina Freitag and Vice World Champion Andreas Wellinger win ahead of Norway and Slovenia. For Germany it is the fifth mixed gold in a row at a World Cup.
Andreas Wellinger hugged the hill queen Katharina Althaus, then Karl Geiger and Selina Freitag jumped into the ball of gold: With another triumph in the mixed race, the German ski jumpers crowned a memorable World Championships weekend in Planica. “It’s a bit unreal, but super awesome,” said Wellinger less than 24 hours after his silver coup in singles.
“It’s the greatest thing to win together with the team. It’s amazing what happened here,” said Geiger in view of the German hill party in Slovenia. The DSV team had already won a complete set of medals on Saturday: first the women’s team around serial winner Althaus flew to gold, in the evening Wellinger followed with silver and Geiger with bronze. Gold in mixed was almost the logical consequence, especially since Germany had been unbeatable at the previous four world championships. In the end, the DSV quartet was ahead of Norway (1004.5) and Olympic champion Slovenia (1000.4) with 1017.2 points.
Geiger continued a crazy series: In his tenth World Championship competition, the 30-year-old won his ninth medal. “It’s crazy. World championships seem to suit me somehow,” said Geiger. This also applied to Wellinger, who had already won silver twice in 2017. In 2019, a cruciate ligament rupture set him back for many years, and he returned to Planica all the more impressively.
“I always believed in myself and luckily I was finally rewarded,” said Wellinger, who was beaming on the podium with Geiger and the Polish surprise world champion Piotr Zyla. The DSV-Adler had disappointed across the board at the Four Hills Tournament, and now they have even achieved the first double podium at a World Cup since 2019.
National coach Stefan Horngacher also felt relieved. “The stone is huge, it’s still falling. We’ve had a difficult season, but we never gave up,” said the Austrian, who was also criticized after the tour. Althaus’ victory at the start of the World Cup on Thursday also gave the team a “push”.
That Althaus broke a number of records at the weekend in Planica: the Allgäu native was the first ski jumper in history to collect seven gold medals, and in the list of the most successful long-distance hunters she only has the Austrian Thomas Morgenstern (eight titles) ahead of her. From a German perspective, only Nordic Combined Johannes Rydzek had won three gold medals at a World Cup in Lahti in 2017.
“Of course that’s crazy,” said Althaus, who together on Friday, Luisa Görlich and Anna Rupprecht sang the hit of the weekend: “We’re number one in the world,” the quartet sang a few hours later than after the award ceremony the medals hung around their necks. Six medals in 29 hours, hardly anyone could disagree.
