Pinkelnig won the New Year’s Tour of the ski jumpers

The Vorarlberg native took revenge on Sunday in the second competition in Ljubno, Slovenia, for the narrow defeat against Anna Odine Ström the day before, relegated the Norwegian and the German Selina Freitag to the places and thus also triumphed in the overall ranking. The clear lead over Ström was a whopping 26.3 points after the third win in the four Tour competitions.

As on Saturday, Ström proved to be a tough competitor on the HS-94 hill, missing Pinkelnig by 0.9 points after the first round. Exactly the number that decided in favor of the premiere winner Ström on Saturday. But Pinkeling kept her nerves, as she often did last week, and sailed with the top distance of the second round to her fourth World Cup victory this season – her sixth overall. In the World Cup she is already 189 points ahead of Germany’s Katharina Althaus, who finished 14th on Sunday. In the nine competitions of the season, she only missed the step on the podium once – in Titisee-Neustadt.

“It’s unbelievable. There were unbelievable six days of ski jumping,” said the 34-year-old Pinkeling in an ORF interview, looking back on the two New Year’s tournaments in Villach and Ljubno. “It was so far away that I was able to win that (the tour, note). I will only realize that on the long flight to Japan,” she said in view of the subsequent relocation of the World Cup entourage to Sapporo and Zao (each two jumps). The lesson from recent days: “If you follow your heart and take it step by step, then dreams come true.”

All that was left for the other Austrians was to congratulate their teammate. Sara Marita Kramer experienced a day to forget on an “extremely small hill” as the second best ÖSV eagle and 16th, left the “excuse me, dirt hill” rather embittered. Chiara Kreuzer was 17th, Jaqueline Seifriedsberger, who is still lagging behind the form of earlier days, ended up in 23rd place. Hannah Wiegele was 41st and missed qualifying for the second round.

The first round was overshadowed by a heavy fall from local hero Ursa Bogataj, who had to be carried out of the run-out area on a stretcher, but was still able to wave to the fans. A cruciate ligament tear was later diagnosed in the individual Olympic champion in 2022.

In any case, the New Year’s tour should be history in this form. Because in the coming year, alternating with the men’s tour in Germany, a jumping in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and a women’s New Year’s jumping in Oberstdorf are planned – the way to the women’s Four Hills Tournament seems to be paved in any case.