Kamil Stoch is among the five that will go to the inauguration of the new World Cup season in Lillehammer. Quite unexpectedly, Piotr Żyła was missing. This will be a special winter for the three-time Olympic champion. For the first time, he was not preparing for it together with the entire group, but individually. He answered how it affected him in an interview for Eurosport.
Stoch directly about cooperation with Kruczek and Doleżal. “She gave me a big boost of energy”
While the other Polish jumpers trained under the supervision of Thomas Thurnbichler, Michal Doleżal and Łukasz Kruczek were responsible for Stoch's preparation. The player himself came up with this solution and is happy with it. – The new situation gave me a big boost of good energy. I felt again that I had some prospects ahead of me. A goal we strive for together. In addition, there is a lot of freshness in the atmosphere in which we work: in providing comments, in everyday functioning. Today I know that this is exactly what I needed, he praised.
Stoch is dealing with such a situation for the first time in his career. Previously, he always functioned in a larger group. So there was the question of how he got into it. – I needed a team where all the attention would be focused only on me. Thanks to this, I had the opportunity to improve certain elements faster and simply develop. Paradoxically, when I went to a camp with the national team in October, it was then that I felt strange: I was again in a locker room full of noise, emotions and external stimuli. I definitely felt better in my sports isolation, being able to focus only on myself, he said.
What can Kamil Stoch afford this winter? “My jumps are good, but…”
In the summer season, the ski jumper from Ząb did not have many opportunities to show himself to the public. He took part in only one competition, the Summer Grand Prix in Wisła. His preparations were also interrupted by an injury. At the end of August, there was a small tear of the internal ligament in the right knee. However, he himself claims that it will not have a major impact on winter activities. – I came to the conclusion that nothing major had happened. I have been in constant training, in constant competition mode for over 20 years, and three or four weeks without jumping does not cause anything terrible. Sometimes they even help, because they allow you to rest a bit and gain the hunger for jumping – said Stoch.
The World Cup season starts on November 22. What will Kamila Stocha be able to afford? – At the moment my jumps are good, but they are still not what I would like to do. And I don't want to declare anything either: neither publicly nor to myself, he concluded.