It should have been a memorable Olympic premiere of the mixed event, instead yesterday’s mixed she&he ski jumping degenerated into a farce. Slovenia with Nika Kriznar, Timi Zajc, normal hill Olympic champion Ursa Bogataj and Peter Prevc lived up to their role as favorites, while Austria’s team ended up fifth. But the competition was significantly influenced by a total of five disqualifications of female jumpers, which is why two absolute outsiders, Russia and Canada, were washed up on the other medal places.
“A Punch and Judy show”, scolded Germany’s head coach Stefan Horngacher, ÖSV sports director Mario Stecher spoke of “immense damage for ski jumping”, Norway’s boss of a “tragedy”. Because in addition to the top nations Germany, serial winner of the competition at world championships, Japan and Norway, the red-white-red team was also affected because Daniela Iraschko-Stolz didn’t wear a suit that conformed to the rules.
As the starting jumper, she landed at just 85.5 meters in the first round, but the jump was not counted at all afterwards. “The waistband didn’t fit me by a centimeter. In principle, the suit conforms to the rules,” said the Styrian disappointed.
Her ÖSV team colleague Manuel Fettner, who sensationally won a silver medal on the normal hill on Sunday, also didn’t really understand the world of ski jumping anymore. “Something like this has never happened to me in this form. I can’t imagine that Dani or others have risked anything pointlessly. It can always happen, everyone is at the limit. Why are they making an example at the Olympics? I have no idea.”
Yesterday, the Polish women’s controller Aga Baczkowska and the Finn Mika Jukkara, who is responsible for the men and who replaced Carinthian Sepp Gratzer at the beginning of the season, moved more into focus than planned. When it comes to a suit, factors such as size, design and thickness of the fabric are limited. However, the ski jumpers in China have to wear new suits because those from the World Cup all wear sponsor patches. As is well known, these are forbidden at the Olympics. But in the World Cup, the controls have recently been much less strict, Stecher claimed yesterday. “You often feel like you’re at the Tyrolean tent rental company, the suits are so big. And now it’s being checked all of a sudden.”
Everything is fine on Saturday
Curious: The same suits were used in the women’s individual competition on Saturday, where all the athletes concerned were judged. In the end, the ÖOC quartet was only 26.6 points short of bronze despite one jump less in the ranking. But nobody was annoyed about that anymore when Zhangjiakou jumped in chaos.
Source: Nachrichten
