Taking aim at the World Cup records: Stefan Kraft (Austria)
Photo: image/Eibner
Winter sports fans, make yourself comfortable! The hardship is over: day-long TV broadcasts from the slopes, cross-country ski runs, chutes, ice rinks and ski jumps around the world are coming in the coming dark months. On Friday, the ski jumpers will start the fight for the crystal ball, which at least the World Ski Association FIS uses to award the best points in the respective disciplines at the end of the season. On the Olympic hill, the jumpers will be going together for the first time at the start of the World Cup: the team competition on Friday will be about the first points for the World Cup, before there will be a total of two individual competitions for men and women on the large hill on Saturday and Sunday.
The competition on the Lysgårdsbakken (HS140), once built for the 1994 Winter Olympics, will be the first of three mixed team competitions this winter. However, there is still a world of difference between men and women when it comes to winning prizes and advertising revenue. When it comes to winning the World Cup season, the two athletes who can be counted on for women and men are the two athletes who also dominated the winter of 2023/24: The Austrian Stefan Kraft is also the number one candidate for overall victory “this year”. Last winter, the ski flying world record holder won a sensational 13 competitions. With 43 successes to his name, the 31-year-old could equal or surpass the record of his former national team colleague Gregor Schlierenzauer this winter. Schlierenzauer, now 34 and retired, won a total of 53 individual competitions in the World Cup between 2006 and 2014. His supposedly unassailable record is within Kraft’s reach. “It would be absolute madness if I somehow succeeded,” Kraft admitted when asked by the “Kleine Zeitung” from Graz.
However, there is also Ryōyū Kobayashi: After his victory at the Four Hills Tournament, the Japanese caused a stir with a 291-meter flight on a specially built ski jump in Iceland. Kraft’s world record from 2017 is “only” 253.5 meters. However, the 28-year-old Japanese’s incredible flight is not considered an official record.
For the women, everything seems to be coming down to the renewed dominance of world champion Nika Prevc. The petite Slovenian was able to win the crystal ball for the first time in the spring, a few days after her 19th birthday. The quiet young woman from the Prevc dynasty (her brothers Peter, Cene and Domen are also famous jumpers) made it to the top podium seven times in the previous season – and the trend is rising.
But the German Ski Association is also hopeful: Katharina Schmid (28), three-time world champion from 2023, wants to be at the top again after the unsuccessful previous season (tenth in the overall ranking). Among the men, many believe Andreas Wellinger will have a really great season, after second place in the 2024 Four Hills Tournament and third place in the overall World Cup. He made it onto the World Cup podium eleven times last winter: “The goal would be for us to do it a little more often – and then a lot is possible on the tour, the World Cup and the overall World Cup.”
In addition to the Four Hills Tournament at the turn of the year, the Nordic World Ski Championships in Trondheim at the beginning of March are the jumpers’ highlight of the season. Men’s national coach Stefan Horngacher will be under particular observation there: with five victories from Wellinger, Karl Geiger and Pius Paschke, the DSV Adler got off to a brilliant start last year before almost nothing succeeded in the second half of the winter. The national coach came under criticism.
“The potential of my team is huge,” says Horngacher before the start of the 2024 season. Back in the team is six-time world champion Markus Eisenbichler, who weakened last winter and missed the World Cup. However, the jumper from Upper Bavaria is struggling with the new rule, according to which the judges should now deduct three points from the top score of 20.0 instead of the previous two in the event of a botched landing. The 33-year-old thinks the new rating is “stupid.” It will be clear from Friday who gets along best with her.
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