Thursday December 30th 2021
Pioneer in the Four Hills Tournament
Turk flies to a great surprise
29th place is usually not a reason to highlight an athlete. In the case of Fatih Arda Ipcioglu, it is. He is the first Turk to collect points in the ski jumping World Cup. The 24-year-old is happy – and makes an announcement: “We Turks are coming.”
With a red Olympic bobble hat and a big grin under the face mask, Fatih Arda Ipcioglu trudged through the rainy run of Oberstdorf. After his flight into the history books at the start of the tour, the Turkish ski jumper was overwhelmed. “I’m really happy to have made history again. Like many times before,” said the 24-year-old and laughed.
Ipcioglu is a pioneer in his homeland. He was the first Turk to qualify for a World Cup at the season opener in Nizhny Tagil. In Oberstdorf he made it sensationally into the second round with a jump of 120 meters in the knockout duel against the Russian Daniil Sadrejew and scored his first two World Cup points in 29th place. “That was a surprise for me. Now I’m a little tired because there is already a lot of action,” said Ipcioglu.
Now there is a rest day waiting for you to relax before you continue with the New Year’s jumping in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Ipcioglu already knows at least the German tour jumps, but in December 2017 he was the first Turk to miss the qualification at the tour at both locations. Now he will contest the entire tour with his teammate Muhammet Irfan Cintimar. “This success motivates us and we will do our best,” announced Ipcioglu.
At the moment of his greatest success, Ipcioglu was also thinking of the offspring at home. “I’ve seen little boys in Turkey watch and want to be like me. That means that in a few years new Turkish ski jumpers will come and represent our country better than I do,” he said.
In February the Olympics will be in Beijing again, like in Pyeongchang in 2018 when he was the flag bearer. “We don’t go there to get medals. But for us these are still important games,” said Ipcioglu.
The figurehead of Turkish winter sports lives in Erzurum, the largest city in Eastern Anatolia. “That’s where we have our winter sports base,” explained Ipcioglu, everything from ski jumping hills to ice hockey rinks: “We train there and it looks like it will work. We Turks are coming.”