The boss had given the signal and the caravan set out as quickly as possible. After race director Sandro Pertile finally surrendered to the increasingly dangerous Innsbruck wind on Tuesday afternoon at 3 p.m., the ski jumpers couldn’t stop. Most of them got on the buses and quickly changed over to Bischofshofen, where it was wet, drafty and foggy, but you could ski jumping there. In the upper part of the hill there was a cloud, but that didn’t matter, the jumpers had sufficient view of their flight path.
The Four Hills Tournament is not so easily cut down, which is why the jumpers had an ambitious program ahead of them after crossing from Tyrol to Salzburg. They faced two jumps within two days, a new Bergisel jump and an original Bischofshofener. So there were plenty of jumps packed into these two days, which also raised hopes of renewed tension around the overall victory. But in the end it stayed the same: A group of three to four jumpers tried in vain, in the end, as in the ten days before, the same top man was listening to the same national anthem: Ryoyu Kobayashi, Japan.
Practiced in partying on this Four Hills Tournament: Ryoyu Kobayashi.
(Photo: Lisi Niesner / Reuters)
He is now 17.9 points ahead of runner-up, the 23-year-old Norwegian Marius Lindvik. He had come close to Kobayashi after all, in the first round he had left him behind for a moment. The Japanese had only weakened for a short time, only finished second behind Lindvik, but had then collected again and in the final covered a distance that also failed the Norwegian. Lindvik’s compatriot Halvor Egner Granerud came in third, ahead of the Germans Markus Eisenbichler and Karl Geiger, who no longer have a chance of overall victory, but were happy about their slightly improved form.
Kobayashi has the chance of the second ski jumping Grand Slam
On the question of the overall victory, the only question left is whether Kobayashi will win this 70th tour with three or four wins. Whether he is weak like this Wednesday and lets one of his pursuers pass in the last jump, or whether he advances into another dimension of victory. It took 16 years before the Pole Kamil Stoch repeated Sven Hannawald’s fourfold victory in 2002. Immediately afterwards in January 2019, Ryoyu Kobayashi followed suit, and he is now close to being the first to complete two of these ski jumping grand slams.
The circumstances should make it easier. On this tour there was almost everything that meteorologists can predict from the capricious weather in winter. After a warmth in Garmisch and the foehn storm in Innsbruck, sleet fell during the first jump in Bischofshofen, which caused increasing difficulties for the players. The inrun track became slower and slower, but the landing area became even more problematic.
The rain had long since turned into snow, and the forerunners kept smoothing the track, but the main jumpers still ended up almost in a deep snow slope. That abruptly slows down the overall system, with the young Slovenian Lovro Kos, who was still third overall at the time, this led to a fall. His last hopes for victory had fallen too, but more important was that thanks to good technique he had turned to the side in time and not injured.
Falling temperatures are announced for Thursday. The snow should be drier, better visibility and safe landing that means for all jumpers, especially for the favorite Ryoyu Kobayashi.