For the first time in more than three years, the slowly building buzz of jumpers humming down the icy track before the surprisingly loud whoosh that comes when they launch off the platform at about 90 km/h could be heard at Whistler Olympic Park (WOP) last weekend.
On March 18 and 19, WOP played host to a two-day Women’s Ski Jumping and Men’s Nordic Combined Continental Cup, featuring a total of 26 athletes from six different countries all competing for a spot on the podium.
But the weekend belonged to the Germans. Including both the men’s and women’s events, the German team took 10 of 12 podium spots across the two days of competitions, led by two-time Olympic silver medallist Katharina Althaus’ two first-place finishes.
The only non-German athletes to podium were Austria’s Marc Luis Rainer and Canada’s Alexandria Loutitt, who took home a second- and third-place finish in the Men’s Nordic Combined and Women’s Ski Jumping, respectively, on the event’s first day.
Things didn’t quite go in Loutitt’s favour on the second day, when wind gusts forced her to delay each of her two jumps. The delay added some physical challenges, she said, as the more time spent strapped to the skis results in more soreness in the knees and ankles.
But despite the added challenge, Loutitt still managed to claim a fourth-place finish.
“I'm happy with how I performed this weekend. Conditions weren’t in my favour, but some of the other girls had some incredible jumps and deserved to be where they finished,” said Loutitt. “These are the girls I compete against in the World Cup. They are the German A team—we see each other every weekend so we are friends and, you know, one day you beat one girl, one day you beat another girl and sometimes they beat you.”
But regardless of the results, Loutitt said it was just “special” to be able to compete at home in Canada for the first time in four years.
“I think [having these events in Canada] makes people realize just how exciting and special our sport is,” she said. “And having big names, like some of the German girls here, it kind of shows people that we can hold some of these big events and we can have these superstars show up who can dominate on the hill.”
In the Men’s Nordic Combined, which includes one jump to decide the start order of the following 10-kilometre cross-country race, the weekend’s big winners were Germany’s David Mach and Jakob Lange, who each podiumed twice, with Mach finishing first and second and Lange finishing third and first on each respective day.
While Lange was the leader going into Saturday’s cross-country race and finished in the top spot, the race was anything but easy.
For the first three laps, Lange was followed closely by Austria’s Thomas Rettenegger, with a significant lead on the next group of four athletes. But as the last lap came around, Lange was able to put some distance between himself and Rettenegger.
“I knew on the long climb out of the stadium I was way stronger than him,” said Lange. “On the first three laps we worked together a little bit because you save so much energy when you work together. But the guys behind were pushing hard and they were in a bigger group and so we needed to get our stuff together, and in the last lap I knew I was way faster than him so it all went to plan.”
Meanwhile, Mach and fellow German Wendelin Thannheimer were also able to capitalize on the last lap and make their move past the Austrian duo of Rettenegger and Rainer to finish on the podium.
However, the most impressive cross-country performance of the day belonged to Italian skier Aaron Kostner, who came back from a more than two-minute deficit to finish just two seconds off the podium.
According to Norm Laube, chair of the event’s organizing body Black Tusk Nordic Events (BTNE), the competitions were used as a test event for the upcoming World Junior Championships that will be held in Whistler next January.
And with everything going smoothly, Laube said BTNE is ready and excited for the next event and happy to be back hosting ski jumping events in Whistler again.
“Having all the nations here for the Continental Cup has been absolutely spectacular,” he said. “It gives us great confidence how the event came together, and we are really confident for next year's World Juniors. I think our team is ready. They did an amazing job getting everything prepared and actually executing the event.”
