Carina Vogt won at the Olympic Games in Sochi. Silver was taken by Daniela Iraschko-Stolz, Bronze by Coline Mattel.
A piece of sports history was written today in Sochi. For the first time ever a Ladies Skijumping competition was held at Olympic Games. For other new events at the Olympics it is just normal that both, women and men compete, but the female ski jumpers had to fight for over ten years to get their sports included to the Olympic program. With the competition today this fight for acknowledgment and gender equality has come to an end – successfully. Not only the 30 athletes that attended this Olympic event, but all jumpers that were involved in this fight over the years, can hold their heads high today and be proud of what they achieved!
Winner of this competition, and so first Olympic Champion in this sports, came Germany’s Carina Vogt. She jumped 103.0 and 97.5 meters and so won the Gold medal! This was for sure a little surprising, as a duel for Gold between Sara Takanashi from Japan and Daniela Iraschko-Stolz from Austria was expected. But the two top-favourites fainted in the first round, and so Vogt was in the lead at “half-time”. In the final round it was a totally thrilling question, if she could keep this position, because Iraschko-Stolz made up ground, but finally Vogt was the lucky winner. When the result was announced she knelt down in the outrun, surrounded by her team-mates, and shed tears of joy.
Winner of the Silver medal came Daniela Iraschko-Stolz. In the first round she jumped only 98.5 meters and so was fifth. But with really great jump of 104.5 meters in the second round she improved to the second place – 1.2 points behind of Vogt.
Coline Mattel from France earned the Bronze medal. With a nice jump of 99.5 meters she was second after the first round, but with a jump of 97.5 meters she fell back behind Iraschko-Stolz. After the official trainings, where she never jumped as far as Iraschko-Stolz or Takanashi, it looks like the big surprise of the day, that Mattel won this medal. But actually this is not the first time in her career, that she improved massively from the trainings to the competition – so maybe this surprise is not as big as it looks at first glance.
Takanashi, current World Cup leader and odds-on favorite, missed the medals on the forth place. In the first round she jumped 100.0 meters and so was third at half-time, but 98.5 meters in the second round were not enough to answer the strong jump of Iraschko-Stolz and so she fell back to this unappreciative position.
Fifth came Evelyn Insam with a pair of jumps of 98.5 and 99.0 meters. The sixth place was taken by Maja Vtic from Slovenia. She jumped 100.5 meters twice, but did not take a better place mainly because the style points she scored in the first round were not the highest ones.
FULL RESULTS CAN BE FOUND HERE:
http://data.fis-ski.com/pdf/2014/JP/3927/2014JP3927RL.pdf