3rd station Four Hills Tournament – The DSV eagles and the Bergisel curse – Sport

German ski jumpers have been waiting for an overall victory at the Four Hills Tournament for 22 years. Sven Hannawald secured the last triumph for the DSV Eagles in 2002. Now Andreas Wellinger should end the dry spell. The 28-year-old leads the overall ranking at the halfway point of the tour.

The jumping in Innsbruck follows on Wednesday. However, the Germans have bad memories of Bergisel. All dreams burst there several times:

• 2016: Severin Freund is in second place at the halfway point of the tour, then he falls during the test run on Bergisel and sustains bruises. He still takes part in the competition with bruises – and comes second. But it is no longer enough to attack the now clearly leading Slovenian Peter Prevc.

• 2018: After a strong first half of the tour, Richard Freitag only has Poland’s Kamil Stoch ahead of him in the overall standings. But after landing on the poorly prepared Bergisel, he fell in almost the same place as his friend two years earlier, had to go to the hospital and got out.

• 2019: After two second places, Markus Eisenbichler is also in second place in the overall standings at halftime. Then comes the first round from Innsbruck, “Eisei” makes a mistake and only manages 13th place in the end. The Japanese Ryoyu Kobayashi gets his 3rd victory and flies away.
• 2020: Karl Geiger also travels to Bergisel in second place overall after podium finishes in Oberstdorf and Garmisch. And his dreams are also dashed after a “hop” in the first round. Geiger even allows himself to be drawn into a verbal argument with an intrusive cameraman. The tour victory is gone.

• 2021: The déjà vu: After his victory in Oberstdorf and fifth place in Garmisch, Geiger dreams of winning the tour again as second overall. But in Innsbruck the first round went wrong again, the Oberstdorfer only ended up in 16th place. “The fact that it’s like that again this year just makes you sick,” says Geiger.

• 2023: Geiger travels to Bergisel in fifth place in the overall ranking – and is miserably eliminated from the qualification in 51st place. “I really expected a lot, but definitely not this,” he says. In the competition, Andreas Wellinger only came in 18th and also fell far behind.