Lundby vs Takanashi vs Althaus third act: we accept surprises!

In a few days the women's ski jumping World Cup will start: let's see what will be the main themes of the next competitive winter.

Wednesday 4 December 2019 26 minutes reading time

On the weekend between 6 and 8 December next in Lillehammer will be inaugurated the ninth edition of the Women's World Cup special jump. The last two years saw the overwhelming ascent of Maren Lundby to the elite of the discipline, which started at the end of 2017 from a talent that was not yet fully expressed and came last March to be the greatest jumper of all time. In parallel with the ascent of the Norwegian, the consecration of Katharina Althaus also took place, but at the moment it appears to be the largest square ever. A reverse trend, on the other hand, for Sara Takanashi who has gone from being the woman to beat to the role of appearance in the final of last winter, the worst of her illustrious career. Waiting to see if indeed Lundby, Althaus and Takanashi will undertake a "triello" for the conquest of the crystal ball, let's go and see what is the context in which they will try to reach the big goal: we will start from a space frame- temporal analyzing the seasonal calendar, to arrive at what one can expect from the Italian team, passing through the favorites, outsiders, suggestions and possible surprises of a very long winter. CALENDAR 2019 -20 During the FIS autumn congress held at the beginning of October in Zurich, the final version of the seasonal calendar for the maximum women's circuit of the special jump was confirmed. For the third time in history - usually every four years - there will be the absence of the main event that will put all the spotlight on the World Cup. After the epochal turn of a couple of summers ago, when it was decided to focus more on competitions with big trampolines, this year it will be a transition and an adjustment of the novelties even if the seasonal incipit will be to traction of the large plants. In fact the first five competitions in the program will all be played on Large Hill, which will be decidedly impressive and with considerable wind impact. The opening will be held on the Lillehammer HS 140 with two individual tests - it should be noted that compared to 2017- '18 and 2018- '19 the Triple will be set aside, as it will return to this springboard in March and then we wanted to avoid having an unbalanced number of races in a single location - so the Christmas break will start after the Klingenthal stage, jointly with the men's sector. The resumption of hostilities will be as usual in recent times in Japan, where for the second consecutive season it will jump on Sapporo's unpredictable urkurayama, approaching the first seasonal Normal Hill in that of ZaÅ. From the prefecture of Yamagata the period of the "classics" will begin, as coming back to the old continent the Rasnov, Oberstdorf, Hinzenbach and Ljubno plants will face each other with good continuity hosting the World Cup in past years. The grand finale of the season in March will again feature the second edition of both the Raw Air and Russia Blue Bird Tour: in 16 days there will be the beauty of 7 individual competitions between Norway - in Oslo, Lillehammer and Trondheim - and Russia - in Nizhny Tagil and Chaikovsky - for a real tour de force considering the displacements that are anything but trivial. In summary, the women's special jump year will begin on Friday 6 December and end on Sunday 22 March, while in the meantime it will face 21 individual tests (10 on Normal Hill and 11 on Large Hill) and two on team (both on Normal Hill). For the first time in the history of the World Cup, large plants will have a greater impact, and the first 5 competitions could lead to new dynamics in the top rankings. WOMEN TO BEAT Maren Lundby - A couple of seasons were enough to win all the titles in the discipline, completing the triple crown for the first time in history: crystal ball (both in 2017 - '18 and in 2018 - '19), gold Olympic and laurel, obviously all at an individual level. At the last World Championships in Seefeld he also dragged Norway to a couple of bronze medals in the Team Events, which can still be considered the biggest Scandinavian jumper ever (the masculine expression was used precisely because it is without distinction any of sex). For what has been done in the last two years, she can only have to deal with the favors of the forecast, but beware that during the off-season the drawbacks were lacking. In fact, in August, in full struggle for the conquest of the Summer GP, during a training session he ruinously slipped on the inrun fumbling on the starting pole, in spite of himself he didn't encounter anything on his own way and ended up literally falling off the trampoline getting himself traumas trivial. Since then time has passed in abundance, so it should not accuse any condition delay but attention to the possible aftermath of mental character that could leave this episode. In any case, already in the national championships in October he made it clear that he was ready, having dominated in front of team mates who habitually frequent the noble districts of the ranking. Katharina Althaus - Her numbers speak emblematically: two second places in the overall World Cup ranking, two individual silvers obtained between the Olympic Games and the World Cup. At the moment it is the largest place in the discipline, so it is urgent to finally unlock it when it is necessary to fully harvest the fruits of an entire season. During the summer it was one of the few Germans that did not have to go through the infirmary, but nevertheless it never managed to steal the eye particularly: it is clear that the races on plastic count relatively little compared to those on snow, but they can give important clues. The impression is that in the past few months it was not in a healthy weight, it is still an athlete of an absolute level that knows how to present itself at its best when it matters most: just look at what was done in December 2017 and 2018, when it brought home five of the seven successes in World Cup races in career, as well as two victories in the Lillehammer Triple standings. Sara Takanashi - 56 victories for a total of 100 podiums in 136 first level races disputed. His numbers are still scary, even if the last two years has been the worst period of his career - beware: in all this the first medal with five circles also arrived but it was "only" a bronze. If the trend of the winter results is negative, the same cannot be said of the summer ones as last August brought home the eighth title in the Summer Grand Prix. Now the fundamental question is: Will Takanashi be able to come back as the phenomenal jumper who is usually seen on plastic and who has seen the discipline dominated in the five years between the Olympic Games in Sochi? In the coming months the difficult sentence, but for his part he tried to change his technique to try to keep up with the much more explosive Lundby and Althaus, without so far being able to close the circle. Juliane Seyfarth - Everything about her in the last 12 months has all the air of being something paranormal. Presented at the start of last season as a veteran with no significant results in her long career, she reached the end of March 2019 with 4 successes and another 9 top-three in the World Cup, a touched bronze world title, a landslide victory in Blue Russia Bird Tour and a great third place in the crystal ball race. In addition, this summer, for a second deficit in the opening stage of Hinterzarten, he threw to the winds the possibility of imposing himself in the Grand Prix, still proving to be a woman from the very first positions - a fact confirmed during the national championships when the team mates arrived after the music. Having said that, it seems impossible to set a limit because all the historical limits have already disintegrated them: attention to her that at the dawn of the thirty years could be a real crack. Eva Pinkelnig - Some analogy with Seyfarth has it. First of all it was one of the biggest surprises during the last winter - but compared to the German it had a past (almost remote) already of high level -, secondly in turn it could blow the bank in the next months. Having come to the headlines in the first two years of the PyeongChang Olympic four-year period as an athlete who began to jump at a decidedly advanced age, a whole series of injuries seemed to have damaged her career. Once health was rediscovered, it didn't take long to jump back like a time and now there is curiosity to understand how far it will go. Compared to Seyfarth, the palmares are lower because they consist of only 3 podiums, but in terms of potential it could also be higher thanks to its natural explosive force. OUTSIDER The first among the outsiders cannot but include the Slovenes, after all they would probably deserve even a higher status if they had some more relics on the bulletin board. In the Tricorno team there is great curiosity in the return to the unlucky Ema Klinec's races: during the national championship at the end of last December, after a high-level start to the season, the twenty-one of Ziri reported a second break in the cruciate ligament of a knee after the one that blew up the Sochi Olympic Games; the convalescence of recent months has followed a process with standard timing and, back to competitions in the autumn, Klinec has proved immediately competitive even with some understandable hesitancy in the support of telemark. Attention to her that at this point represents something more than a simple suggestion. If Klinec should reveal some uncertainty too much, Slovenia will be able to look to Nika Kriznar and Ursa Bogataj with good optimism: the first is back from a series of seasons in continuous growth and now the next step will be to see it with good constancy on the podium, who knows even in the fight for the crystal ball, given its excellent technique in flight that goes well with the many competitions on large trampolines; where Kriznar will find it more difficult, Bogataj will instead be exalted, the absolute protagonist of the current solar year in which he has collected the best career results. In the ranks of high ranking athletes, the veteran of a thousand battles Daniela Iraschko-Stolz certainly cannot miss, but it will be difficult to see her with continuity in the race for the World Cup and because the years are starting to be felt (now they are 36!), And because it is from a four-year period that a season without problems of various kinds has passed unscathed. Finally, she earned the rank of outsider Anna Odine Stroem for her own merits, climbing for the first time on the podium last January and now a permanent presence among the top 10/15 in the world: for her to report an off-season troubled due to a a long-standing physical problem, however it has been treated so as not to create problems during the winter. CHARM-SURPRISES Among the various Nordic disciplines, the female leap is the one with the most intriguing suggestions, as in recent months a whole series of athletes has come overwhelmingly to the positions that count and will now be tested over a whole winter. First of all, the new junior world champion Anna Shpyneva, seventeen-year-old Russian master of an excellent technique due to her age and it will not be surprising that she should emulate the performance of last season of her friend and teammate Lidiia Iakovleva, in turn to be taken into serious consideration. The same age as Shpyneva is the French Josephine Pagnier, author of a remarkable Summer GP: the two rising stars class 2002 will probably face the season focusing on one side on the world championships in Oberwiesenthal and on the other on the Youth Olympic Games of Lausanne, which for the transalpine will also be at home with the fact that you will jump on the Premanon trampoline. Looking at the athletes who came out of the junior age there is curiosity to understand the margins of improvement of Nozomi Maruyama and Agnes Reisch: the Asian has already experienced a first season in the maximum circuit, showing considerable improvements race by race, arriving at a performance in line with that of Yuki Ito, not really the latest arrival; a different speech for the German woman, whose name has been in the mouths of the experts for years but has never had an actual response, between an explosion that has been slow to happen and very little space within her team. In the summer, in the plethora of injured and Teutonic convalescents (from Carina Vogt to Anna Rupprecht, passing through Ramona Straub and Gianina Ernst), the twenty-year-old from Isny proposed herself as the third Schwarz-Rot-Gold force not far from the listed Althaus and Seyfarth. Irina Avvakumova and Chiara HÃ¶lzl can also represent important suggestions. The Russian will mainly have the task of acting as a mother hen for the young team-mates and if she were to find the enamel of the best pre-Sabbath days then she could take considerable satisfaction especially on the big trampolines. The Austrian, on the other hand, is the unknown by definition, capable of everything and the opposite of everything in a short time. Should it take on a mental solidity that has often been lacking in decisive moments, then it could put the great talent to its best advantage. HOME ITALY Among the suggestions, as well as possible surprises, there is also an azure: Lara Malsiner. The nineteen-year-old from Ortisei has so far followed a career in line with that of the aforementioned Kriznar, albeit on average collecting something less than the Slovenian. The summer saw the young Gardena express herself at a high level and now there are important expectations about winter: Italy has never gone beyond a 12th place in the overall standings of the World Cup collected by Evelyn Insam in the 2012 season - 13; this statistic was improved then it would be a triumph, everything could already be in the strings of the Malsiner family mizzle. Not so simple, on the other hand, it will be trying to get on a podium of the day, but with an excellent state of form and a bit of luck Lara could already do it as her sister did three years ago. The second violin in Italy will be Elena Runggaldier, at least in the starting blocks of the season. The blue veteran will always be a cross and delight for the Italian movement, capable of excellent races in the right and disastrous contexts when something will not turn out for the best. The signals given in the autumn were positive, with success at the Italian championships and also the victory in the first snow test in Rovaniemi, still beating Lara Malsiner. Then who knows if the same age Seyfarth did not inspire her with her exploits. Our third force in the field at the World Cup will be Manuela Malsiner: the twenty-two year old winner of the youth world title at Soldier Hollow three years ago, has returned from the second serious career injury after the one occurred on the Large Hill of Planica in March 2014, therefore at the moment he is still looking for the best sensations in his leap, in trying to get back that athlete capable of bothering the best in the world. Behind the three athletes directly followed by Janko Zwitter and Sebastian Colloredo there is a growing movement that aims to give continuity of results in the near future. For this year it will be difficult to see Veronica Gianmoena and Annika Sieff in the World Cup as the Continental Cup calendar of the Nordic combined has several races in parallel to the maximum circuit of the jump in different locations. Taking a look at the young specialists, there will be to monitor the growth of Jessica Malsiner and the recovery from one-knee surgery for Giada Tomaselli, both will be focused on the Youth Olympic Games and the Junior World Championships.

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