After the Team Tour

The FIS Team Tour is over after a somewhat amputated overall competition this year. It wasn't anyone's fault but the weather's, though, and some exciting things happened along the way. The Team Tour is the second-half answer to the Four Hills tournament, and in my opinion it offers an interesting dimension to the ski jumping season, given that it is a team competition. 

I realize now that I should have blogged about my weekend at Willingen, and that is probably something I will do next week, when, for all intents and purposes, the ski jumping season reaches its climax in the form of the ski flying championships at Vikersund. I'll post some photos too, I promise, although some impressions of my trip can be seen on my twitter.

Willingen was the start of the Team Tour, though, and what a triumph for the Norwegian squad it turned out to be. They won the team competition, and Norwegian Anders Bardal won the traditional competition at the Mühlenkopf hill - and at the same time, the Austrian team turned out to have their worst weekend of the season, being collectively unable to match the strong Norwegians.

To summarize this competition, I'll test a new format for blogging about an event, highlighting the most important things that happened. It goes like this:

What it meant: As I mentioned, it meant that Norway led off the Team Tour as the team to beat. They looked like a homogenous team in the team competition, with every one of the four jumpers practically better than his Austrian and German counterpart. And with a decidedly bad weekend for Austrians Schlierenzauer and, especially, Kofler, Anders Bardal took over the overall lead in the individual World Cup.

Surprises: On the positive side, Daiki Ito (3rd in the individual competition) continued to step up his game, and so did the brilliant Roman Koudelka, who finished second. And two youngsters set the Willingen weekend on fire, namely the explosive Peter Prevc, who out-jumped everyone Sunday afternoon (149.5 m), and the Norwegian newcomer Anders Fannemel, who came to Willingen fresh from his COC victory in Brotterode.
On the less positive side, I did not expect the Austrians to fall this flat in any competition this season. Kofler looks deflated, like he was on good form back in November and early December, but now he's a just about average jumper. Morgenstern's class keeps him in the top ten consistently, but he simply does not have the form this year. And Gregor Schlierenzauer is one of the greatest ski jumpers of all time, but this weekend at the Mühlenkopf hill, Schliri just didn't have it. He finished in the lower half of the world cup points, which is not where an all-time great should be. 

Perspectives: Was this the weekend where the Norwegians took over superiority in ski jumping from the dominating Austrians? Were the Austrians, whose strongest jumper in the individual competition was the beleaguered Martin Koch, just having an off week, or were the Norwegians, led by Bardal, taking over?
It was probably the former, since the decisive difference at least in the team competition seemed to be that the first jumper (i.e. the nominally weakest) was considerably better for the Norwegian team. That was the surprisingly strong Fannemel. Had Fannemel jumped at about the same level as Martin Koch, Austria's first jumper, the team competition would have been closer. Bardal won the individual competition with a fine first jump and a strong 148 meters in the final round. But he was indeed aided by a sluggish (or unfortunate?) Schlierenzauer.

Klingenthal got cancelled. It was too bad for a Team Tour that had developed an intriguing matchup between Norway and Austria, with the German team a distant third, battling Japan and the Czechs and Slovenians for best-of-the-rest honors.
What it meant: It meant that the Team Tour was suddenly a two-hill tournament. And it meant that Richard Freitag, who has been the best German jumper this season - apologies to Severin Freund; he hasn't won any competitions - missed a chance to win one for his home crowd in Saxony. Oh yeah, and it showed once again that a machine that can control the weather should be invented as soon as possible.
Surprises: Only one, and it was a great one: Tom Hilde, who had fractured one of his vertebrae in Oberstdorf back in December, came back and won the qualifying round! How about that for a clear announcement of Norwegian confidence?
Perspectives: The King of Klingenthal in recent years, Kamil Stoch, might regret not getting to jump in Klingenthal, as he has won the last two Summer Grand Prix competitions and a World Cup competition there! No other jumper has won at the highest level in Klingenthal since Simon Ammann two years ago.
Who might this ski jumping cancellation benefit? Probably the Austrians, who should be better ski-flyers than the Norwegians, and who would consequently prefer a decision at Oberstdorf instead of Klingenthal.

Oberstdorf: Today's team competition closed this year's Team Tour. Austria did take the overall victory after edging out a rather lame Norwegian squad in the ski flying events.
What it means: Who knows? Looking ahead to the ski-flying World Championships, Schlierenzauer does not look on form. Neither does Morgenstern, to say the least. Kofler had a bit of a comeback today, but the Austrians might have finished third overall in the Team Tour if not for Martin Koch's ski flying abilities. Oh, and Daiki Ito took over the lead in the ski flying World Cup.
Surprises: Martin Koch, bad back and all, can still fly with the best of them! Slovenia overcame the first two jumping rounds and won the team competition. Peter Prevc tied the hill record (225.5 meters), but fell and broke one of his skis - and his collarbone. Germany disappointed badly and slipped down on the Team Tour overall classification, particularly because of a really bad jump from Michael Neumayer. Because Norway was behind in the Team Tour, I was also surprised that their coach, Alexander Stöckl, selected Rune Velta to jump second instead of a jumper with some more upside (e.g. Bjørn Einar Romøren or Johan Remen Evensen, who are also expert skiflyers).
Perspectives: Austria won the Team Tour without dominating. Apart from Koch's win yesterday, they did not show too great form going into the Vikersund week. Neither did the Norwegians, but don't sleep on one of the flyers (Romøren or Evensen) pulling a surprise at Vikersund. And Fannemel brings it, he's the real deal.
I'm actually sorry that we won't get to see Peter Prevc gunning for the world ski flying record next week, because he seems to be the flying specialist on his best form at the moment. Kranjec was good today too, but there is an explosiveness to Prevc that could have made him a star at Vikersund. Let's hope his crash today does not affect his further career too much.

So who wins the ski flying World Championship next week at Vikersund? There are two competitions, individual and team, and here are my favorites for them. The more stars, the more I believe in them:

Individual
Robert Kranjec, Daiki Ito, Martin Koch (***)
Gregor Schlierenzauer, Tom Hilde, Roman Koudelka (**)
Anders Fannemel, Richard Freitag, Kamil Stoch (*)

Team
Austria, Norway (***) [What, you expected Bulgaria?]
Japan, Germany (**)
Czech Republic, Slovenia [if they get Peter Prevc back, which they probably won't] (*)

I'm looking forward to the Vikersund week. Until then, peace out!

We're halfway there

It has been requested that I do a blog post in English about ski jumping, which is the in-season sport I follow by far the most right now. I'm not sure I know enough about it for my musings to be of any general interest, but here goes.

I wanted to do a preview of the Mühlenkopf weekend in Willingen, as I am going myself, and I am really excited about that. Then I realized that it takes place in a little over two weeks, and one of the appeals of ski jumping is that the face of the competition may change in a split second. Ask Tom Hilde, the pre-season spearhead of the Norwegian squad, and he'll confirm his plans for the Four Hills tournament changed rather quickly when he crashed in Oberstdorf in the dying days of 2011.
So I'll do my preview of the Willingen weekend when I've packed for the trip.

Now, I'll take up the idea from fisskijumpingworldcup.com and write something like a midseason report of the World Cup calendar. In their report, they've chosen to look at what is new this season, compared to seasons past. As I am relatively new to this sport, and it's the first World Cup season I follow closely, I instead focus on five key elements of the World Cup season so far. In random order, here are five key observations I've made this season:

1. Land of the Schwarzenegger
The Austrians have dominated. It seems a rather simple observation, but in several competitions we have seen double, or even triple Austrian victories. Before the season I expected Thomas Morgenstern to be the front-runner for overall World Cup victory, but he has had a difficult season, and from the get-go in Kuusamo, Andreas Kofler appears to have taken a step up this year, and he now looks difficult to beat in the overall competition. Especially since Schlierenzauer, who lately has looked better than Kofler, has chosen to skip this weekend's competition in Sapporo. Kofler was the best jumper early on this season, and now he has to hold on in order to confirm his breakthrough, and I believe he will.
How come Kofler is that good this year? He is a former Four Hills winner, of course, but this season he is exceptionally good at the push-off from the run-in (according to Bjørn Einar Romøren, with whom I exchanged some tweets on the subject last week), and he's been consistent compared to many of the others. Schlierenzauer, in fact, is the only one who has been comparable to Kofler in consistency (and he lost 100 points on that rather harsh disqualification in Kulm). And the only non-Austrian, crucially, who has shown some consistency is Anders Bardal. Look at the overall standings in the World Cup: It's Österreich, män!


2. Hannawald Revisited
OK, the title of this paragraph is a stretch, but the essence is that a strong new generation of German jumpers are on their way to the elite. To join the Austrians, as it is right now, but Germany is an important country to have in ski jumping: Many of the most important hills are in Germany, and the crowds get bigger if they can rally around local favorites. Plus, of course, one cannot be blind to the fact that Germany is Europe's biggest market, and that ski jumping has never been as popular and visible in the media as during Germany's Hannawald craze back in 2001-2002. Ski jumping was everywhere: Cereal boxes, chewing gum wrappers, you name it. And that kind of attention is good for any sport.
Ski jumping is popular every year in Germany, but this year it has gotten more attention because of the success of Severin Freund and his younger teammate who projects to have a sky-high ceiling, Richard Freitag. Freitag has already won one competition this year and finished high up in the rankings several times, and he seems like the heir apparent to the throne left vacant when Hannawald quit the sport. And with Hannawald's teammate Martin Schmitt apparently on his way out of ski jumping, a group of other young Germans are ready to shine: Both Andreas Wank and Michael Neumayer have shown potential this year, and I believe Germany is ready to challenge Austria as the top nation in ski jumping again.
(My apologies to Norway, who boasts a great group of jumpers, but in Hilde's absence, none of the youngsters has quite the potential of a Freund or a Freitag; Rune Velta and Atle Rønsen have had good jumps, but at the same time Romøren and Evensen are having horrible seasons).

3. Stoch's Reprieve
As I wrote in a Danish-language blog post a couple weeks ago, I was really disappointed in Kamil Stoch's failure to finish what would have been a breakthrough win at Innsbruck. It seemed like Stoch's nerves got the better of him in the razor-sharp end game against Kofler and Schlierenzauer. Kofler in particular has been able to elevate his game in the final rounds this year, and it is necessary to do that if you want to belong to those selected few jumpers who can be counted on to jump consistently at the highest level. Kamil Stoch made it to the big scene last season, but he looked like he couldn't close the deal in a high-pressure situation.
Then came Zakopane last weekend, and there he was again, Kamil Stoch, in a situation where he could get a win he wanted really bad - on his home turf - if he could ace his final jump. He did just that, and the relief and exhilaration were visible in the normally stoic Pole. I saw Stoch's final jump again on YouTube, with Polish commentators, and although I don't understand Polish, I could make out the name 'Adam Malysz', that legendary Polish ski jumper who ended his career last season, and for whom Stoch is expected to take over, and to whom he is constantly compared. At Zakopane, Stoch got another chance to prove he should belong in the elite few, and he took it.
Sure, as skijumpingworldcup.com notes, Central Europe has produced more jumpers who have had solid results this year, like Lukas Hlava, Roman Koudelka, and Stoch's compatriot Piotr Zyla. But none of them, and perhaps no one in the World Cup field, at least outside of Schlierenzauer and Freitag, has the potential, the upside of Kamil Stoch. Now, in the second half of this season, he must cash in on that potential, and jump like the world class jumper he is.

4. Heavy Weather
Yeah, I'll be brief here, because there is not much to say about one of the most important participants of this season (save perhaps for Gregor Schlierenzauer's zipper!), namely the weather. The wind, occasionally the snow, and quite often lack thereof, have been factors at all levels of ski jumping competitions this year (granted, women's competitions have suffered more than the men's). Here's to hoping it will be better in the second half - - and definitely at Willingen!

5. Soarin' Sarah
The Let Women Jump movement won its cause recently, and the ladies will jump at the 2014 Winter Olympics . And what an argument they have made for their cause this season, the first one with a World Cup for the ladies. It's not like there has been any doubt as to who the best jumper is. Or the most promising talent. They're both the same: 17-year-old Sarah Hendrickson of Park City, Utah (USA). But it's been fun to watch, and what a ride this season has been for young Sarah already: Recently, in Predazzo, she tied the hill record (set by Adam Malysz!) on saturday, and then came back sunday and jumped half a meter longer! The ladies' competition has plenty of interesting personalities, like Norwegians Line Jahr and Anette Sagen, Melanie Faisst of Germany and pre-season favorite Daniela Iraschko (Austria), who has been a consistent second in World Cup events. So it's not like the competition is weak, by no means, but Sarah Hendrickson has dominated ladies' ski jumping this year. Last weekend she even won an event on the Continental Cup, keeping her skis flying before the next World Cup event. In the overall classification, Hendrickson has a nearly insurmountable lead over Iraschko, and she figures to be a leading lady of ski jumping for many years to come.

Allright, those were my five impressions of the ski jumping season so far. There have been more, of course, but I have to limit myself, lest my blog posts get too wordy.
Does this mean I'll write the ProzessTrainer blog posts in English from now on? No. I'll mix posts in Danish and English, but I'll also be sure to tag posts in the appropriate language to facilitate this hybrid.
Please leave comments if you have had other impressions of the ski jumping season, and let's get a discussion going!