Karl Geiger and Andreas Wellinger stir up euphoria after the Klingenthal weekend – what’s going on at the Four Hills Tournament?

Karl Geiger and Andreas Wellinger stormed towards each other with their mouths wide open and shouted a long drawn-out “Krass!!!” in contrast to.

Two and a half weeks before the start of the Four Hills Tournament, Geiger caused huge euphoria in the German ski jumping camp with a double success that was not thought possible at the home World Cup in Klingenthal.

Olympic champion Wellinger rounded off a dream weekend with third place on Sunday – the DSV Eagles could hardly believe their explosion in performance.

“That’s crazy, I don’t even know what to say. I didn’t expect that,” said Geiger, who has had to wait for a World Cup victory since January 2022. Now he has achieved numbers 14 and 15 of his career within 24 hours.

Especially on Sunday he showed his strong nerves in a very difficult competition with very changing conditions. “But that’s Karl, he always brings it down,” said national coach Stefan Horngacher on “ARD” about his “devil violinist”, while former national coach Werner Schuster added Eurosport spoke of the “mentality monster Geiger”.

The 30-year-old from Oberstdorf won with jumps of 141.0 and 141.5 m ahead of the Swiss Gregor Deschwanden and his teammate Wellinger. World Cup leader Stefan Kraft, winner of the first four competitions of the season and second behind Geiger on Saturday, was ninth and was not on the podium for the first time this winter.

Kraft claimed the yellow jersey ahead of Wellinger and Geiger.

Nevertheless, when he looks at the current standings in the overall World Cup, the German ski jumping fan’s heart warms. With Karl Geiger (2nd), Andreas Wellinger 3rd), Pius Paschke (4th) and Stephan Leyhe (7th), there are four DSV eagles in the top ten of the FIS ranking, three of them even among the first four.

No wonder that around three weeks before the start of the Four Hills Tournament the faint hope of another German tournament winner is getting louder and louder. It has now been a whopping 21 years since Sven Hannawald won all four tournament competitions in 2002 and was presented with the Golden Eagle in Bischofshofen.

Since then, from a German perspective, the tender little plant of hope has usually been plucked abruptly during the tour. This year the stars seem to be particularly aligned.

Two and a half weeks before the start of the Four Hills Tournament, Geiger was in outstanding form in Klingenthal. With 297.9 points, he was well ahead of Deschwanden (293.6) on Sunday – despite a long break before his final jump. On Saturday he prevailed over long-time winner Stefan Kraft.

The other Germans also impressed on the second day of the double event. In the second round, Wellinger equaled Michael Uhrmann’s twelve-year-old hill record with 146.5 m and was only half a point behind Deschwanden – he shared the best distance of the day with the Swiss. Pius Paschke finished eighth in the sixth competition of the season and made it into the top ten for the sixth time.

The DSV Eagles continued their series of podiums in the sixth competition of the season and are on the hunt for records: The only time a German podium finish in each of the first six competitions had ever occurred was in 1998/99 – when Martin Schmitt, Sven Hannawald and Ronny Hornschuh were even in the first seven Jumps flew onto the podium.

The German soaring initially seemed to be a good omen for the tour: Schmitt won the first two competitions in Oberstdorf and Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Today’s was included in the final bill Eurosport-Expert but only fourth.

For over 20 years now, DSV athletes have often traveled to the first tour stop in Oberstdorf in promising form. In the recent past there have also been various jumpers with winning potential, such as Severin Freund, Andreas Wellinger, Richard Freitag, Karl Geiger and Markus Eisenbichler, but year after year jumpers from other countries have celebrated.

So far this season, Austria’s top jumper Kraft has dominated the World Cup, won all of the first four competitions of the winter and is traveling to the tour as one of the top favorites. In Klingenthal, the last Austrian tour winner (214/15) was beatable – so we can hope so.

In Engelberg, Switzerland, where the traditional dress rehearsal will take place next weekend before the start on December 29th, Kraft wants to get back on the road to success.

But the ski jump is also a good place for Geiger: in 2018, the Allgäu native celebrated his first World Cup victory there, in 2021 he won again and came fourth in the mixed previous year. From Oberstdorfer’s point of view, there can hardly be a better way to get the tour going.