The German ski jumpers are far from the top in the dress rehearsal for the Four Hills Tournament. Karl Geiger even falls in the first round, but still makes it to the final. There he shows that the form curve is pointing upwards – which does not apply to all DSV stars.
With a fall at the Ski Jumping World Cup in Engelberg, Karl Geiger gambled away a top position, but at the end of the dress rehearsal for the Four Hills Tournament he showed strong improvement. The 29-year-old from Oberstdorf came in tenth in Poland’s Dawid Kubacki’s fourth win of the season and was the best German eleven days before the start of the tour. “That was so good for me today,” said Germany’s best ski jumper: “Tenth despite a fall – if that’s not a positive sign, then I don’t know either.”
In the first round, the Olympic third-placed athlete from Oberstdorf fell at a strong 140 meters when landing, but remained uninjured. He fell on his right side and slid down the slope. The man from Oberstdorf got up again without outside help. Geiger waved to the audience to show that everything was fine and left the run with skis in hand. “It’s good that I didn’t hurt myself,” he said on ARD.
Thanks to his long sentence, Geiger qualified for the second round despite the point deduction due to the fall. From 16th place Geiger improved there with 136.5 meters into the top 10 (265.6 points), without his mishap Geiger could have fought for the podium. On Saturday, the two-time Engelberg winner was only 22nd.
World Cup leader Kubacki prevailed with jumps on 141.5 and 135.5 meters (300.4) in front of the Austrian Manuel Fettner (297.2) and yesterday’s winner Anze Lanisek (Slovenia/293.7), so the veteran drives as Top favorite for the tour starting on December 29th in Oberstdorf. The second best German behind Geiger was Pius Paschke in 14th place. Olympic champion Andreas Wellinger was unable to repeat his strong sixth place from the day before and finished 19th ahead of Constantin Schmid (20th). Stephan Leyhe came in 22nd place, Markus Eisenbichler experienced a setback in the search for top form with 30th place.
“We’re not at the top, we can only flee forward. We’ll attack and get everything out of us,” said Geiger. Last year he traveled to the tour as an Engelberg winner and World Cup leader – and like so many other DSV eagles before him, he missed the first overall victory since Sven Hannawald 2001/02. Now he feels comfortable in the role of the hunter.