Who will take the place of Doleżal? He was the boss of all bosses, but this is a big risk

On Sunday in Poland, she was fifth in the team competition of the ski flying world championship. Individually, the best of Poles – – took 11th place. For the first time in a long time, our jumpers did not stand on the podium at the competition where medals are being fought.

We have already calculated on Sport.pl that since 2016, Poles have returned from seven consecutive championship events with a total of 12 medals. To sum up, we found that the unsuccessful start in Norway is a minus, which emphasizes the entire poor season and which is deleted by the coaching staff of this squad.

Pointner had wanted to come to Poland before

The most important people of the Polish Ski Association think similarly. For some time now, the director and others have had many conversations with different coaches. Some of them refer to this publicly. – We conduct constructive conversations characterized by mutual respect and understanding -. Same .

Three years ago, Pointner said that he liked Adam Małysz very much and that he was a decent man. He added that he would talk about taking over our staff after. Then we chose Michał Doleżal. Earlier, in 2016, we thought about Pointner for a while, but we chose Horngacher. The then vice-president of PZN, Andrzej Wąsowicz, explained on Sport.pl that Mr. Alex was not seriously considered, because inside the union it was considered too difficult.

Our activists are still afraid of this. But they may have to take a chance. The truth is that other coaching stars do not want to work with Polish jumpers.

Stoeckl was arrested by the family, Horngacher will not come back

It is very possible that he was number 1 on our list. But the Austrian driving the Norwegians refused us for family reasons. After 11 years of work, Stoeckl will probably stay in Norway for the next four. His compatriot, Werner Schuster, explained that he was so busy with private matters (including building a house) that he did not intend to return to the World Cup now. Another Austrian, Andreas Widhoelzl, has no reason to leave his country. With the national team, he had just won Olympic gold in the team competition. In turn, the return of Stefan Horngacher to Poland is neither a good nor a realistic scenario.

Thus, we have listed all the greatest coaching celebrities currently working with various national teams. The young Robert Hrgota, who is successful with the Slovenes, should also be appreciated, and Hideharu Miyahira, who is the head of the Japanese team, can also be mentioned. But none of them was and is not a candidate for the new Polish coach.

The reasons are different. The Slovene is successful, but still has little experience and is younger than Piotr Żyła and Kamil Stoch, who at the end of their careers could use a coach with great authority. We associate Miyahira with successes, but it must be remembered that the leader of the World Cup and the Olympic champion also has his club coach, Richard Schallert.

Kojonkoski only brought hope

This glance at the coaching market is enough to see that we don’t have much choice. Of course, we can bet on a less media-trained, well-trained trainer who has already released talented jumpers into the world, and these have achieved successes. We know that representatives of PZN have found such people and are talking to them.

But would the above-mentioned 35-year-old Żyła, also almost 35 and 32-year-old Dawid Kubacki react well if they were told that in place of the liked and appreciated by them Michał Doleżal, someone they did not know? PZN knows about these circumstances and although the market of such trainers is shrinking, it is looking for a trainer with a surname.

The first option was. Although he has not been in the lead team since 2011, we decided that it is worth the risk. We thought that the character that Stoch, Żyła and Kubacki remember as a coach giant from the time when they started serious jumping, could simply kidnap these three of us. Unfortunately, it seems that Kojonkoski primarily counted on big money and not on a big challenge. The Finn wanted to earn a lot more than all the top coaches at the moment. And he wasn’t in a hurry to negotiate, he just treated the Polish side not entirely seriously.

Stoch started out when Pointner was already the boss of all bosses

And here we come back to Pointner. Stoch and they were 17 and Kubacki was 15 when he started making the Austrians perhaps the most powerful team in the history of jumping. When Stoch won his first ever World Cup competition (in 2011 in Zakopane),. Then he firmly demanded that the competition, in his opinion, under unfair conditions, be stopped.

By then Pointner was already known as the boss of all bosses. He has already won 46 different trophies with the Austrians (medals of great events, victories of the World Cups, Nations Cups, Four Hills Tournaments and places on the podiums of these classifications) and in the coaching nest he always had the most say. The period of working with the Austrian team – a great decade from 2004 to 2014 – was closed by Pointner with numbers that no other coach in the history of jumping can boast of.

Gregor Schlierenzauer, Thomas Morgenstern, Andreas Kofler, Wolfgang Loitzl, Thomas Diethart and at the beginning Andreas Widhoelzl and Martin Hoellwarth jumped a total of 99 victories in individual World Cup competitions and 19 triumphs in team competitions of this rank for Pointner. At the Olympic Games, World Championships and Flying Championships, this team won 32 medals, including 17 zlotys. As team Austria was undefeated at major events from 2006 to 2013, winning nine in a row. And the Nations Cup for 10 seasons under Pointner won nine times and finished second once.

For a long time the former unfulfilled jumper (one of his greatest successes was the silver of the Universiade which he won) was considered a coach with an absolutely innovative approach. The more successes he had (let us add that all the medal positions in the World Championships, Skiing Championships, Olympics, World Cups, Four Hills Tournaments etc. his jumpers won as many as 77), the more he was proud to announce the power of neurocoaching. Until he finally became his hostage. And not only his. Above all, he fell into the trap of believing himself infallible. And one more thing – living only with work.

The Austrian champions were fed up with Pointner and his neurocoaching

“The coaching philosophy has changed a lot over time. In the beginning, he was a coach in the full sense of the word. We worked together on the jump technique and the development of physical fitness. This suits me – I need to know where I am making mistakes so that I can correct them. Suddenly, however, everything started to revolve around neurocoaching and developing audiovisual perception skills. Everything only in the head. Matters related to physical training were completely relegated to the background […] he remained deaf to my words. This approach annoys me “- he wrote in his book” My fight for every meter “.

At the end, Pointner was even worse working with. The super talent, introduced to great leaps by Alex, even stated that if the federation had not dismissed the coach in 2014, he would have had to take a break, because he would not have survived this cooperation any longer.

Depression and my daughter’s funeral the day before Christmas Eve

Since 2014 Pointner has no contact with jumps at the highest, world level. He stopped being the Austrian coach in April 2014, and three months earlier confessed that he was treating depression. In the fall of 2014, he plunged into it after his 16-year-old daughter tried to take her own life. – I ask myself if I spent too much time outside the home and if I did not pay too little attention to my family – he said in the pages of “Kleinen Zeitung”, talking with his wife about the therapy that the family was going through and the suffering caused by the fact that Nina had severe brain damage and had been in a coma for months.

At that time, in the fall of 2015, Pointner decided that the best form of therapy for him would be to return to work. And he accepted the offer to advise Vladimir Zografski. The Bulgarian was 22 years old and had several World Cup starts with which he proved his talent. He was the highest in his career in 10th place in Engelberg in 2012. – He has a great potential, and when I pass on my knowledge to him, I can see a gleam in his eyes. I missed that at the end of my work with the Austrian team – said Pointner at the beginning of the winter of 2015/2016. A dozen or so days later, the coach’s daughter died, which must have had an impact on his work. In December 2015, instead of leaving with Zografski, Pointner said goodbye to his child, who was happy for the competitor, Engelberg. The funeral took place the day before Christmas Eve.

Last nightmare job. “Sport is a pseudo-world”

Nevertheless, Pointner tried to help Zografski. But there was no effect. In the 2015/2016 and 2016/2017 seasons, Bulgaria made a total of 27 starts in the World Cup, did not score a single point and was eliminated 20 times in qualifying.

A few years ago, Pointner’s wife said in the Austrian press that all those brave people who throw themselves into the abyss while skiing are cowards in normal life, since in a difficult moment for Alex they did not know how to behave. Zadry was also in Pointner. – I often heard the question “Is everything okay?”, But hardly anyone had time to wait for an answer – he said in an interview with “Tiroler Tageszeitung”. – The death of my daughter changed everything. The world of sport is a pseudo-world. Life is not always about faster, higher, stronger – he added.

Expert and critic. And is it still a coach?

Nevertheless, Pointner has not completely given up on the world of sports in recent years. He did not let Austrian fans forget about himself, because he appears as an expert on television and in the press. And he does not deny himself very critical comments towards coaches and players when they are doing worse than they were in his time.

Can Pointner still refer to those great times as a coach? Nobody knows that. Will anyone risk? Will we do it? PZN hesitates. For now, it is known that Pointner is one of our options.