Portrait of Sarah Hendrickson
Sarah Hendrickson is 21-year-old American ski jumper, who despite the young age achieved a lot and for 4 years belongs to the world's top female ski jumpers.
Born in Salt Lake City, UT Hendrickson made the best possible debut in the World Cup at age 17 by winning the very first in the history Ladies World Cup competition in 2011 in Norwegian Lillehammer with jumps of 100,5 and 95,5 meters and 29,3-point advantage ahead of Coline Mattel and Melanie Faisst.
"I trained well in the summer, it paid off" - she said after her very first victory -"My idol is Lindsey Van. I could cheer her when she won the first World Championships in Liberec in 2009. It was a historical event. I thought then that I wanted to be like her. Today I was able to do that, at least in this way".
The good shape and talent of the young American also showed itself in the next competitions and Hendrickson was able to win nine competitions and won the first ever overall World Cup title.
In November 2012 together with Lindsey Van, Peter Frenette and Anders Jonson she took the 5th place in the first in history mixed team competition, which was held in Lillehammer. But the shining star of the season was Japanese Sara Takanashi and the battle between them was exciting to the very end.
Despite the fact, that the Japanese eventually won the World Cup winner title with 250-point difference between, Hendrickson managed to join her idol Lindsey Van and just like she 4 years earlier, won the World Champion title in Val di Fiemme 2013.
But the rest of the 2013 was less lucky for her. In the summer, after the victory in the US Championships, during the training in Oberstdorf after the jump of 148 meters Sarah Hendrickson fell and suffered a serious knee injury. She was determined to take part in the first ever ladies' event during the Olympic Games in Sochi and after a long and hard rehabilitation she managed to do this and with historical number "1" on the BIB became the first woman to jump at the Olympics. She finished the competition on the 21st place, but the true success was that she didn't give up and made her Olympic dream come true.
After a long break Sarah Hendrickson came back to the rivalry in this season, slowly achieving a good shape from before the accident. In February 2015 in Ljubno she managed to jump twice on the podium, by being ranked 3rd in both competitions. During the World Championships in Falun she didn't manage to secure the title, which she achieved two years earlier, but the 6th place was a good result and made her fans believe that she will start to count in the battle for the most prestigious titles and victories again.
By Anna Sobol
