What’s with this “drilling”? An expert explains how you can fix Stoch

Let us remind you: after being eliminated in qualifying in Innsbruck, the leader of the Polish team returned to the country to first look for peace and rest from jumping for a week. Then he is to train and eliminate the twisting error in flight just beyond the threshold, which prevented him from flying even at the level of scoring in the last two weeks.

The coaches have already agreed what to do to get Stoch back to the top. There are several variants

So far, we did not know much about Kamil Stoch’s training. It is known that when a Pole gives a sign that he would like to return to the hill, he will appear on the Middle Krokiew in, or if the competitor himself wants it, or if he fails to prepare the hill in Poland, he will go to Planica and train several times in Slovenia.

Now the coach has indicated that they know how Stoch’s return is to go. – There is a specific plan for Kamil. Just as he is confident and ready, he enters the training on the hill. We will make an appointment later – said the Czech after the third competition of the 70th Four Hills Tournament. . Nobody knows if it will be the competition in your favorite home Zakopane, the next competitions before the Olympics in Titisee-Neustadt, or Willingen, or maybe only Beijing itself. . But next to each of these variants there is a note: Stoch will decide.

Was she a leader instead of Stoch? Kubacki: Woe to us if “Pieter” becomes the boss

The other players are still jumping in the tournament in Bischofshofen, but support their teammate. when asked about his absence from Stoch’s team, he confirmed that the atmosphere was slightly different. – When Kamil was, it is known that whenever something did not happen to us in the best possible way, he was still there and could pull us. It slammed all the way down – said the jumper.

Adam Małysz, after Tuesday’s attempt to play the competition in Innsbruck, said that ¯y³a must take over the role of the team leader from Stoch. – I’m the boss? I am always the boss, nothing has changed here – Żyła laughed. – Woe to us if “Pieter” is the boss. Also maybe not? – he was getting along with a friend.

Kubacki: It is clear to me that Kamil will return to jumping well

In the case of Stoch, Kubacki explained how he approached the decision to withdraw a Pole from the Tournament right after it was passed. – Kamil wanted to cut himself off from it for a moment, rest and come back with new energy. When I was leaving, I said that I wish him a rest. I know that he will come back to this good jumping sooner or later and he will beat us on the hill a few more times. It is clear to me – argued Kubacki. – I won’t say that the atmosphere is cheerful, but we know what the situation is like. You just have to accept it. I was sorry to see it and hear that such decisions are being made, but I will not cry either. There is no grave atmosphere, because we have to keep working – he added.

– And this is not Kamil? – he laughed at the same question about Stoch. After a while he added that he is convinced that soon everything will be fine with the jumper. – In general, it is not too cheerful – said Paweł Wąsek. – It was sad when Kamil went and it was hard to see how such a great champion gave up the competition. We focus on ourselves and try to improve our jumps to make it better. Let’s hope that as soon as Kamil got lost, he will find himself – he added. – I hope that we will meet soon at the hill and we will cut by meters at the second red line, the size of the hill, and not at the first, i.e. construction point – summed up Dawid Kubacki.

“I am calm about Kamil. He has a strong psyche”

There were many cases of jumpers returning to the World Cup and great form after such withdrawal from the competition, like Stoch’s. , your. From the Polish backyard, Maciej Kot has experienced many crisis situations in recent years. And maybe he did not come back to the top of the competition, but he knows exactly how the competitor feels at this point. The jumper even has problems with the same element in the technique: the distortion in flight. – I hope that in Kamil the cause of these problems in the air is completely different than in mine – tells us the Cat. – I had a problem with it from the very beginning. I’ve never jumped perfectly symmetrically. With Kamil, the technique was always impeccable. It is not a matter rooted in, for example, posture defects, but a mistake that is now happening on the hill – assesses the Pole.

– But such things do not happen from week to week either. We know that a hardware problem has been ruled out and that’s good, because that’s the easiest way to fix. I don’t know any other details, but I’m calm about Kamil. He has had few emergencies, but he is coping well with them. He has a strong psyche. As far as I know him, I know that he needs to rethink these jumps himself. First of all, refer to your own feelings, find them. He can probably tell more about these jumps than the coaches sometimes see from the side. Talking to the staff will also help, the support of the most trusted people is very important in such moments – he adds.

Cat: The worst situation is when a contestant goes to a competition and doesn’t know what he wants to do

How can repairing Stoch’s “drill” bug look like? – Here, the key may also be to look for the cause, and not to look at the effect itself. So looking for some earlier element that could have made Kamila twist in the air. It is worth analyzing and trying to eliminate. I’m not inside the team, but it seems to me that it’s not about eliminating the twist itself, but more about something that causes instability in flight – argues Maciej Kot.

– Whether such a break will be effective for a player depends largely on his psyche. If he has confidence, he knows clearly what he wants to do and goes to the hill with the conviction that he has a plan and if he does it, he will achieve a good result, then it can be done at the competition. Here it was apparently not enough and it was necessary to rest, calm and implement changes in jumping in training. During training, you can give them much more and in a different atmosphere, and this gives a lot in such a crisis – describes the jumper.

– In my case I had the feeling that this was the moment when I had to go back to easy training, sometimes even to a smaller hill. I was looking for an idea to jump, gain confidence and a clear plan to go to the competition. The worst situation is when a competitor goes to a competition and does not know what he wants to do: he is constantly struggling with the fact that he has a few ideas, does not know which to implement, or is even aware that they are not bringing results. If training outside of the World Cup is going well, it becomes a challenge to repeat them in competition. After a long break, we fall out of the rhythm of the competition, so it’s not that simple. The first attempts are burdened with much more pressure, but I think that, especially in the case of Kamil, it can be dealt with – emphasizes Kot.

Stoch needed emergency assistance? Kraft went to train during the Tournament and did not regain form. “Here is the moment to reset your own psyche”

Could the decision to withdraw Stoch be made earlier? Yes, but the player himself emphasized that he wanted to fight alone to the end for his own form and place at the Tournament. He was convinced that the plan prepared by the coaches would prove successful this time and would be the answer to his big problem in the jump technique. In Innsbruck he was painfully convinced that he had to take a break from sport and then rethink everything, which was also mentioned by Michal Doleżal.

In such circumstances, without taking into account Stoch’s thinking, the decision could have already been made in Oberstdorf or in Ga-Pa. She would give the Pole a little more time for quiet training, but she was also much more nervous, she could create something unwanted in the atmosphere in the Polish team.

It was also discussed whether Stoch needed emergency help. Such as he gained, for example, who after an unsuccessful qualification in Garmisch-Partenkirchen went to Seefeld, several dozen kilometers away in Austria. He cleared his head a bit on his cross-country skiing trip there, and then went back to jumping, but on a smaller object – the 75-meter hill. – Am I satisfied with the results? Not really, because they did not translate into the results at the Tournament. It’s hard to say if I feel better on the hill in the competition now, but during the training in Seefeld it was very good. I was folding up for the inrun position differently, I felt that it was a missing element – assessed the Austrian in an interview for Sport.pl, who was still in Innsbruck. In the third competition, which was moved to Bischofshofen, TCS was eliminated after the first round, losing to the sensational 36-year-old Manuel Fettner, who later took a great fifth place, a result that happened to him recently 21 years ago.

– If you have any problems with feeling or in flight, going down to smaller objects does not always give you a lot in the context of returning to the competition, because it is a completely different type of hill. The most important thing here is to gain a moment to reset your thoughts and your own psyche. For this break between competitions is perfect – pointed out Kraft. And such peace is to wish Kamil Stoch.

The other Polish jumpers still take part in the 70th Four Hills Tournament. The last day of competition in the event is ahead of them. First, Andrzej Stękała, Paweł Wąsek, Dawid Kubacki, Jakub Wolny and Piotr Żyła will take part in the qualifying session at 2:30 PM, and two hours later they will face their rivals from the KO system pairs for the last time. Live coverage on Sport.pl and in the Sport.pl LIVE mobile application. Live broadcast of the competition on Eurosport, TVN and Player.