The new season of the Ski Jumping World Cup started on Friday in Lillehammer. In the mixed team competition Poland took seventh place.
On Saturday, our most successful player will start his 22nd season. Kamil Stoch he did not fit into the Polish mixed team because Paweł Wąsek and Aleksander Zniszczoł performed better than him in training (they represented Poland together with Nicole Konderla and Anna Twardosz) and also David Kubacki. But on Saturday, on the 140-meter Lysgårdsbakken hill, Stoch will first compete in the qualifications (2:45 p.m.), and then most likely also in the first individual competition this winter (4:00 p.m.).
“Wild Joy”. Will Stoch feel it again?
Stoch is not in the form that could give him hope of repeating the best result he achieved at this facility in the past. He won three of his 39 World Cup victories there – in 2016, 2018 and 2020.
This last triumph is particularly memorable. It was thanks to the victory in Lillehammer in March 2020 Stoch secured the win in the entire Raw Air series. He started it with only 27th place in the prologue in Oslo, then he had the second place in the team competition in Oslo, he was seventh in the first individual competition in Lillehammer, in the prologue before the second planned competition there he took 13th place and finally unexpectedly won this competition in a beautiful style.
– The jump was clean. Wild joy in the air – he said, smiling from ear to ear in an interview with skijumping.pl, especially happy with his 139.5 meter flight in the final series. Thanks to this result in the competition, he advanced from third place to first place and also to first place in the entire Raw Air.
They didn't give me a vase. They gave me a watch, but it was a man's
– Your wife writes to me, “Ask Kamil if the vases are producing this year,” said Dominik Formela from skijumping.pl, who was interviewing Stoch.
– Well, you see, they didn't give me a vase! They didn't give me a vase, honey! They didn't even give me a plate, they didn't give me anything. They gave me a watch, but it was a man's watch, unfortunately – Stoch laughed.
Stoch received the plate half a year later. And he joked that luckily that plate wasn't cut in half. Why?
The Norwegian Prime Minister stopped the pursuit of Stoch
The competition in Lillehammer won by Stoch turned out to be the last one of that season. All because of the coronavirus pandemic. Raw Air after Lillehammer still managed to come to Trondheim, but only the prologue was played there. Stoch was 10th in it. In the Raw Air general classification, after nine out of 16 planned series, the Pole had a slight advantage over the chasing group. Second Ryoyu Kobayashi was only 7.4 points behind our leader, third Marius Lindvik – 7.6 points, fourth Ziga Jelar – 10 points, and fifth Stephan Leyhe – 12.9 points.
But there was no chase. He was stopped by Walter Hofer, then World Cup director. He did it on the orders of the Prime Minister of Norway. Erna Solberg announced in her address to the nation that due to the spread of the coronavirus, she was introducing a ban on sports competitions throughout the country for two weeks. So Hofer had to announce that the following events were canceled: the individual competition in Trondheim, the team competition in Vikersund and the individual competition in Vikersund. And that the season ended with a competition won by Stoch in Lillehammer. Because the World Flying Championships in Planica planned after Raw Air have been postponed to the next season.
Stoch wrote to arrange his thoughts. “Weirdly happy”
– It's hard for me to choose the words that would best describe this situation. I don't think there are any. On the one hand, I would like to feel happy and be able to celebrate this success. On the other hand, I got it in circumstances that completely devastated me. Just like the way I found out about it – commented Stoch on skijumping.pl. – In fact, the tournament I won was cut off in half. It's both great and strange, a bit sad, considering what's going on around us, he added.
Stoch couldn't organize his thoughts for a long time. A dozen or so days later, he published an important entry on his social media. “Weird end of the season, strange communication, strange premonitions, strange joy,” he wrote.
Our champion must have also felt strange at the beginning of April that year, when the Norwegian Ski Association decided to cut off his bonus for winning Raw Air.
The Norwegians did not keep their word, and Stoch stuck them with a pin
The organizers decided that instead of the 60,000 euros promised to the winner, they received them tournament Stoch will be rewarded with EUR 33,750. They calculated that the Pole deserved this much because he won after nine out of 16 planned series. This was surprising, because knowing that the tournament might not be played in its entirety due to the coronavirus, at the beginning the organizers assured that even if it happened, the winner would get the full prize. After almost a month, they changed their mind. We don't know when they transferred the money to Stoch's account. However, they gave him the material prize, a large black plate, only half a year later, in Wisła, at the beginning of the next season.
Stoch commented eloquently on receiving this award: “Good thing they didn't cut the plate in half”.