The “Harry Potter” ski jumping continues
It’s been ten years since Simone Ammann announced his retirement from ski jumping. Nevertheless, the Swiss team took part in the World Cup. Everyone else thought about giving up, but the 42-year-old just let himself go.
Perhaps this is Simon Ammann’s final career goal, his master plan: to deceive everyone forever, to keep flying forever. The final magic trick was perfect for the Swiss, once known in the world of sports as the Harry Potter of ski jumping.
The coming weeks will mark the tenth anniversary of “Simi’s” first resignation announcement. But the 42-year-old is still there, starting at the home World Cup on Friday in Engelberg, as he has been for a quarter of a century.
“What if he goes on forever?” Swiss Radio asked half-jokingly in 2018. Amman continued half-seriously. “Honestly,” said the two-time Olympic champion in 2002 and 2010, “I am the only amateur in the World Cup.” The pilot with two hobbies – ski jumping and airplane flying – is often busy collecting points in his 26th season.
Farewell is like the Rolling Stones
Even if not, no one would be mad at the most famous Swiss athlete against Roger Federer, who is six weeks younger and retired much later. Amman has long been considered untouchable. The passionate rock fan in his second life – “a ski jumper in a costume doesn’t look like enough of a rocker – but we’re definitely in it” – celebrated success as a sporty version of the Rolling Stones’ success. Her farewell tour was repeatedly postponed. They never called it that.
However, Amman first did this in early 2014, when he announced after the Olympic defeat in Sochi that he would “99 percent no longer be in Pyeongchang.” When he assured his wife before the 2018 Olympics that the Games were really over, he did just that. Since then, obituaries of Oman’s sporting successes and reports of the end of his career have appeared every year.
Oman has been teasing it ever since, only half-heartedly denying that “maybe” is his favorite word, be it his last Four Mountain Championships, his last World Cup or his last Winter Olympics. He then appeared again at the 2019 World Cup and the 2021, 2023 and 2022 Olympics. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see him appear again at the 2025 World Cup and 2026 Olympics.
“I can deal with the day-to-day things now,” Aman told SID 2021 in the middle of his last season in the traditional sense. “I don’t even think about the big picture, the really important things.” Unlike everyone else thinks about him . That is much better.
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Those: www.ntv.de
2023-12-15 17:22:34
#ski #jumping #Harry #Potter #flying
