Let’s forget about Kojonkoski and Pointner! Only one coach can help the jumpers. Even right away!

– There are also proposals to bring in an experienced specialist who could look at everything from the outside and see mistakes that may not be seen by staff coaches at the moment. If you stay with players for a long time, the trainers may not notice the details. I know myself how my comments work, when I appear on the hill after some time, sometimes our staff may not notice certain things – said in the program of the 3rd series on TVP Sport.

Seven weeks of waiting for changes

They can not. The Ski Jumping World Cup has been going on for seven weeks and it’s hard to say that Poles have improved significantly since Nizhny Tagil, where we had a total false start. If you count all the World Cup points scored by our entire team (379), it turns out that we have less than seventh in the general classification (380!). This only shows the scale of the crisis that affected Polish jumps. From week to week, the coaches ensure that the jumpers are close to good form, but they cannot translate good jumps from training to competitions. And although there seems to be a lot of right in this, PZN already wants specific actions and decisions. Because there are four weeks left to the Olympic Games, the situation at the moment is that we have a good jumping Żyła, completely technically out of tune, who has lost his greatest asset, i.e. the flight phase. And also other riders jumping strongly in the check, but starting to jump a little better than at the beginning of the season. “A bit better”, which means they enter the second series every now and then. But it is definitely not enough.

Let’s forget about Kojonkoski and Pointner. Nobody is thinking about releasing Doleżal

Adam Małysz’s words are not surprising. If there are already ideas to join the team of an experienced coach who would look at the jumps of our players from the side, the fans immediately draw the candidates for coaches who have achieved great success in ski jumping years ago. We are talking about Aleksander Pointner and. Only that both of them have been outside the World Cup for years, they do not know the latest trends. It is not known if they feel any changes in technique. After all, there used to be talk of bouncing on the threshold, now it is more of a “push” that the players and coaches talk about. In fact, when Kojonkoski was asked about this season in the “Polish Ski Jumps” program, he was unable to give specific answers. He “swam” strongly on the subject, as if he was not even up to date.

So it seems that adding a foreign coach or asking him for advice would be a vote of no confidence in the staff of the Polish national team. The coaches would probably take it as a clear signal: we lost and we were unable to fix the jumpers. Although we are talking only about an advisory voice, and not dismissing Doleżal, because no one in PZN really thinks about it yet. – I would advise against it (dismissal of Doleżal – editor’s note). PZN’s management board may require drastic steps. After Oberstdorf, there was quite a lot of pressure on me to do something about it and for the coaches to clarify what the plan B would be if it did not work in Ga-Pa. Everyone is tired and irritated, because the Olympics are at their belt. The question is whether, if this continues and we continue to compete and it will not be better, is it not better to sacrifice it for the Olympics, which in a month’s time – added Małysz.

Why look far? There is a trainer who can help you right away

It seems, however, that if the staff of the Polish national team were to be strengthened with an additional voice from outside, then you do not have to look far. Such a person should be Jan Szturc – the legend of Polish ski jumping. The trainer who brought up Adam Małysz, in a way, also built ski jumping in Szczyrk and the Vistula.

But most importantly, Jan Szturc does not cut off the coupons, but works in the profession all the time. He is up to date with what is happening in ski jumping. He has probably seen every jump of the Polish jumper in the World Cup for years. Even for journalists, every conversation with this trainer is a real technique lesson in ski jumping. Because Szturc, like no one in Poland, can explain the dependencies and technical nuances of the jump. He can easily judge the jumps of our jumpers from TV recordings. One can only guess how he could help if he saw the jump from the coaching nest or from the coach’s exact recording.

And finally, crucial, in the past he had already helped Adam Małysz in this way and the Pole always returned better. The same was the case with Tomasz Pilch, whom Szturc helped two years ago. When the coaches of the national team spread their hands and were unable to influence the jumper, he asked for training with Szturc. Due to the conditions, the training did not even take place. Pilch and Szturc had a few phone calls about the technique and … it immediately translated into an improvement in the young jumper’s results.

Club coaches cut off from the jumpers. And the world does it differently

Since the times of Stefan Horngacher, the contact between ski jumpers and their coaches has been cut off. The Austrian was a real despot who managed the jumpers with a hard hand and did not even let the club coaches watch the training sessions from under the hill. Michal Doleżal wanted to rebuild the ties between the coaches, but what he did was to improve the relationship between the staff themselves. The issue of club coaches has not been resolved and it has not been practiced for years to return a jumper to a club coach to improve his form. And the world does. It works perfectly in Norway or Japan. Other countries are doing exactly the same.

– I would like club coaches to cooperate with staff coaches, but it’s difficult. If the latter puts a player into the former, it looks like he is not coping with his form. It does not change the fact that it will be necessary to focus on it in the future, because such a formula is used in most countries. When it comes to consultations now, it is the will of the trainers, especially the main one – explained Adam Małysz in the program of the third series on TVP Sport.

Michal Doleżal constantly emphasizes the role of the training staff. He emphasizes how important cooperation and the voices of other people are for him, so any advisory vote should not be anything bad. Well, it will not be a loss of the coach’s authority, on the contrary. Showing your openness, willingness to change and save the season. Because if no significant improvement has been seen for seven weeks, there is no indication that a positive revolution will take place in the next four weeks.