There are no more young winners to be found. No spontaneous, wild young ski jumpers who simply click their skis onto their boots and plunge down, like the young Slovenian Domen Prevc once did. Those days are over, almost all of the better jumpers on this tour are older, around 30 years old. One of them is Andreas Wellinger, the first stage winner of the current Four Hills Tournament.
Although? In fact, the name Wellinger had been known in the ski jumping world since 2011, when he made his debut in the World Cup as a 17-year-old. And especially when he became Olympic champion with the German team in Sochi in 2014, he was 19. As an almost teenager, he had this special way among the many serious, fully concentrated, absorbed ski jumpers. The way he portrayed the opposite as a happy, rascally boy. If you like, it was Wellinger I back then.
Now he is 27 years old and, despite his disheveled helmet hair, he is suddenly one of the established ones. In fact, he had just recently been at the very beginning, like ten years ago. But he is still different from many of his sports colleagues, and he can still surprise others with his humor. For example, when he stands at the top of the line and sits on the beam where you would otherwise stare down at the scenery and think about it. Then Wellinger likes to crack another joke.
He surfed on a high trajectory, further than anyone else, over the green line
If he did that in his final jump on Friday in the opening competition of the 72nd Four Hills Tournament, then the trick worked. Wellinger jumped off powerfully and on time and stood high in the air, he had a flight curve with a long arc on which he surfed further than anyone else, in the first and second round.
After qualifying at the latest, it was clear that the leading Wellinger would come last in the first round of the final, a position that doesn’t suit everyone. The last ski jumper has the most attention, perhaps in all of sport these days when almost all the balls are at rest. But Wellinger seems to be enjoying it. Humor, a good punchline, these are the best remedies for tension. It helps to loosen the knot of concentration and to think about other things. Wellinger has now achieved this. In the end, his looseness carried him over the leader’s green line in the final.
Wellinger II is the great hope of national coach Stefan Horngacher and the German association, who could achieve the long-awaited next tour victory after Sven Hannawald in the winter of 2001/22. Horngacher’s compact team was torn apart a bit in Oberstdorf, but Philipp Raimund and Karl Geiger still have a chance of a podium finish.
Wellinger should also benefit from the past few years, some of which weren’t funny at all
That could represent a bit of general support for Wellinger, but not when it comes to the decisive jump. Then Wellinger could also be helped by those experiences that weren’t funny at all.
Because he has repeatedly faced difficult times in recent years. Wellinger fell heavily on the stem in 2014 and sustained several bruises. In 2019 he suffered a complex knee injury that tore his cruciate ligament. At the end of winter 2020 he broke his collarbone while on vacation in Australia.
Such experiences, which have led other athletes to give up their careers, obviously strengthened the future Wellinger. In the past few days he had also proven to be a warning. He has now overcome the Schattenbergschanze in Oberstdorf, also because Wellinger had worked on it for a long time, in extra missions, “in the summer and in the fall, and the last week was also important,” he said.
From all of these experiences, both good and bad, the humorous Wellinger II managed to establish and maintain certain principles. He has defended his jump in the last few weeks. When it came to the fact that he might have to change it here and there, Wellinger stepped in. In a series with lots of strong rankings, he refuses to change anything, at most he wants to further perfect what already exists.
Then he left everyone behind, stood in front of the backdrop in Oberstdorf and could hardly believe it, as if he were the 17-year-old World Cup beginner again: “The flags, the atmosphere, the team, it’s all awesome.” Andreas Wellinger then said what makes a mature athlete: “Luckily, I always believed in myself.”