#karlchen

MO:      You can definitely do so. Andreas Wellinger, 2nd place. Do you know how often you were on the podium during this season?

AW:       Uhm, a few times…

DT:         I know it, I know it: 7 times.

MO:      Here we have the living encyclopedia.

AW:       That’s actually his job to know that. (laughs)

MO:      I always tell him that, too, but you should appreciate that he is also able to retrieve this knowledge. That’s an achievement just like yours. How do you feel now as one of the favorites for the world championships?

AW:       First there is another competition tomorrow.

MO:       Nah, do not avoid.

AW:      One by one. I’m happy with my 2nd jump. But at the moment Stefan is just better. I will focus on tomorrow’s competition and then on the world championships. The shape is good; the odds are in my favor, too and with a bit luck we’ll see what happens.

MO:       Back to Stefan Kraft: are you able to beat him? Does he have any weak points? I mean at the moment you hardly have any, too. You like to say there is still some room for improvement. Where is that, your personal room for improvement?

AW:      I think it’s the flight. Stefan has a better glide ankle. You can see that on the large hill or especially on the flying hills. He’s flatter, but therefor he’s also faster and so he collects the meters below. I might do a stronger jump but don’t have so much speed. So I have to try to get better into flying and tickle out the last 2, 3, 4 meters.

MO:       Karl Geiger, how is it to have a new locomotive in the team? How does that benefit the team?

KG:       That’s great. We already knew at the beginning of the season that Severin would not be in his best shape or let’s say after four hills tournament when he dropped out. It’s cool that now there is someone on top again. This motivates us, too. We know everything is possible. So we’re gonna work on that we can tease him (Andi) a little.

MO:      That’s right. Always press forward. Dieter, what do you think about our final rehearsal before the world championships so far?

DT:        Awesome! I mean 4 athletes in top 11 and Markus Eisenbichler and Severin Freund didn’t even compete.

MO:       Richard Freitag is like jumping with only one leg because he’s so sick and it’s still almost enough for top 10.

DT:        Yeah, improved from 25 to 11. That’s incredible and you can just congratulate him. It’s fun to watch you and I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s competition.

MO:      Absolutely. Now it’s time for the victory ceremony. (Karl and Andreas are leaving). We want to talk to Werner Schuster now.

IP:          Werner, earlier we heard words like “it’s a pleasure to watch”, “dream result for DSV”. What do you think about this competition?

WS:        To be honest I’m very pleased with the team performance. You couldn’t expect that. We all know Andi jumps well but it was vague how close to the top the others would get and they all jumped pretty well. I’m especially glad about Stephan Leyhe. We did everything properly. He needed that break and came back freshly today. He is very precious because we need every single man for the world championships.

IP:          You both didn’t go to Sapporo and came here together. Did you put him in the right mood on the airplane or what have you done?