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– It’s bitter, that is. I said long before the championship that if I feel like I have done my best, I will be happy anyway. I’m not sorry, says Granerud, noting, among other things, that his first jump on Friday was bad and the first jump on Saturday was “correct.”
– Then it’s terribly bitter to be number two.
HAD GOLD IN HIS EYES: Halvor Egner Granerud probably thought he had done enough for World Cup gold, but in the end he had to surrender for German Karl Geiger. Here after his last jump in Planica on Sunday.
Photo: Darko Bandic / AP
– It should be possible to make an impact there.
But Granerud’s latest weaving made the tension almost unbearable for a few minutes at the foot of Planica Hill on Saturday. In the end, there was only a 0.5 point difference between the Norwegian and the German Karl Geiger after the last jump.
Granerud could hardly believe his eyes when the scoreboard showed gold smoking from the narrowest margin possible. He covered his face with his hat and dropped where he was.
After the competition, there was a discussion about whether Granerud should stop his last jump. NRK expert Anders Jacobsen said this:
– It should be possible to make an impact there.
– Probably very happy
Granerud partially agrees:
– Yes, it probably could. I notice that jumping is a bit different so far in a ski jump, and I haven’t done much. So maybe. I don’t feel like that’s where I lose it.
Thus, it was gold for Germany, silver for Norway, while Markus Eisenbichler contributed double German on the podium.
– I think when Granerud gets the sum, he will probably be very happy with second place. But that’s the impact that he smoked two wins earlier in the season, and then there will be one more in the final jump in the WC, says NRK expert Johan Remen Evensen.
Thrillerdag
Granerud has loved Slovenia’s monstrous hill from start to finish. In fact, he was Norway’s great hope in the championship after laying the foundation for silver on Friday.
Yesterday he completed the first two of a total of four jumps and landed at 221 and 229 meters. That put him in second place, just 4.6 points behind Geiger and 0.9 points ahead of Eisenbichler.
Everything was set for a real thriller on Saturday. So it was.
Because both Granerud and Geiger had more inside when everything had to be decided. It was also a near-dead race between the two after the penultimate jump. Then it was only 7.7 points before the last jump. After the last comeback, almost nothing separated the two gold rivals.
