Carina Vogt – Olympia gold medalist and World-Cup winner
Carina Vogt – Olympia gold medalist and World-Cup winner
The 22-year old German Carina Vogt from the Ski-Club Degenfeld succeeded in the most important competition that women's ski jumping has ever seen: The Olympic Games.
After a year-long debate about how important women's ski jumping is as a sport, how professional it can be and whether this should give it the same status as a full-fledged sport (just as men's ski jumping is since 1924 (Olympic Games in Charmonix)/1925 (WCS in Johannisbad) and which the ladies absolutely deserved for years!), they were finally allowed to take part in the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi. (Their first appearance in a World-Championship was 2009 in Liberec, Lindsey Van won!)
While other gold medalists usually have World-Cup victories on their account – see Simon Ammann, Kamil Stoch, Thomas Morgenstern and also Lars Bystol (also the latter had just won once before he took home the victory in Torino), Carina Vogt did it the other way. With 34 WC starts in her career at this time and 9 individual podiums, she overtook Sarah Hendrickson, who celebrated her comeback in Sochi after a knee injury and Sara Takanashi, the most successful female ski jumper in the World-Cup to date.
To recap the historic performance of the ladies in the Olympics, here's a summary:
Video Olympics
Now, Carina can join the league of WC winners, when she took home her first World-Cup victory last week in Zao, where she already celebrated her first podium with a 3rd place in 2013!
Carina: „I did it! First World-Cup victory! I am just so incredibly happy about this success!“
Her jump of 99m made her the clear winner ahead of Irina Avvakumova (96.5m) and Spela Rogelj (89m).
She was awarded athlete of the year in Schwäbisch Gmünd, where she was born, and 3rd in the Sportlerwahl in Baden-Baden. Despite this, she also has a bronze medal in WCS (2013), a silver and a bronze medal in Junior WCS (2012), as well as 2 silver and one bronze medal in German Nationals (2008, 2009! Her first COC podium was celebrated in 2008, her first victory followed 2010. She also celebrated 1 second and 1 third place in this series. In the 2013/14 season, she grabbed the 2nd place in the World-Cup overall.
After a rather hard start for her in Lillehammer this season on the 19th place, Carina improved rapidly to rank 7 and 2 in Sapporo, which led her to her vitory in the end.
Her standing in the overall is the 4th rank with 228 points. 68 points divide her from the lead, which is currently occupied by Sara Takanashi ahead of Spela Rogelj and Daniela Iraschko-Stolz.
By the way: Who thinks, ladies ski jumping is now equal to men's, might be mistaken. A victory brings 3.000CHF for the ladies, while men get 10.000CHF. So the ladies victory is worth an 8th or 9th place for a man.
Sadly, we can't bring you an interview video with Carina after her WC victory as there's simply none existing. While we are glad to have the winners interviewed by the FIS as well as German interviews taken by SkisprungTV, we miss this for the ladies.
However, you can see the ladies in action again today (Saturday) and tomorrow for their World-Cup in Oberstdorf. It will be broadcasted by Eurosport 2 (!), ORF and ZDF as well as Polish TV starting 16:15CET on both days.
- by Peggy Kierstan
