2022 Beijing Olympics – Ski Jumping – Mixed Team 1st Round – National Ski Jumping Centre, Zhangjiakou, China – February 7, 2022. Katharina Althaus of Germany in action. REUTERS/Hannah Mckay
February 7, 2022
By Mitch Phillips
ZHANGJIAKOU, China (Reuters) -Germany, who have won four successive world championships, failed to reach the inaugural Olympic ski jumping mixed team final on Monday after individual silver medallist Katharina Althaus was disqualified for a suit violation on a chaotic night.
Germany were hot favourites for the event, which involves two men and two women, but with only three scoring jumpers, they finished ninth of the 10 competing nations, with only eight advancing to the final later on Monday.
Japan also suffered a disqualification, for Sara Takanashi, but squeezed through as did Austria, another of the favourites, when Daniela Irashko Stolz fell foul of the complex rules that link suits and skis to bodyweight in an attempt to remove any advantage that can be gained by athletes being lighter.
German coach Maximilian Mechler told ZDF television: “With Katharina it was the suit that was too big.”
Germany’s national team coach Stefan Horngacher said: “For me it is a puppet theatre. The entire season the suits have been an issue. I am unbelievably angry and I don’t understand it. We had super jumps, all were super, you can only be disappointed with this.”
It was hardly the showcase organisers would have been hoping for.
Although ski jumping has been part of the Olympic programme since the Games began in 1924, women joined the party only in 2014, but with only a normal hill competition while the men have normal, large and team medals to go for.
The mixed team event has been a world championship regular since 2013, with Germany winning the last four editions. They, Austria, Japan and Norway have won all 15 available medals between them.
Slovenia finished fourth in the last three world championships but won the most recent World Cup event last month and were well placed on Monday to break that four-nation stranglehold by taking gold.
(Reporting by Mitch Phillips, editing by Ed Osmond)
Source: One America News Network
