Polish jumpers are trying to break records. The infamous series continues
Polish jumpers are on their way to breaking the record of the 21st century. It’s not about anything positive, on the contrary – the White and Reds are achieving an inglorious series and may soon go down in history.
The first season of the national team under Thomas Thurnbichler was not perfect, but after the disastrous term of office of Michal Doleżal, it gave great hope for the near future. However, the second one, the current one, started very poorly and so far it is difficult to clearly indicate the moment when it may end. On the contrary, if the crisis lasts for a while, our jumpers will set a new, inglorious record.
A disastrous series of Polish jumpers
In this context, it is worth mentioning that we have eight World Cup competitions in the 2023/24 season. Athletes have already competed in Ruka (Finland), Lillehammer (Norway), Klingenthal (Germany) and Engelberg (Switzerland). Unfortunately, the White and Reds are usually doing poorly or very poorly so far, which is visible in the general classification. Piotr Żyła ranks highest – in 21st place. Dawid Kubacki is right behind him. Kamil Stoch is in 33rd position, and Paweł Wąsek is 40th. Aleksander Zniszczoł, Maciej Kot and Andrzej Stękała remain without points.
However, such low positions in the overall ranking are not surprising when the results from individual competitions are taken into account. This was done, among others, by Adam Bucholz, a journalist of the skijumping.pl portal, who wrote on the website X about the inglorious streak that Thomas Thurnbichler’s players are currently achieving. If this continues, they will set a new negative record for Poland in the 21st century.
“Polish jumpers have never placed in the top ten in the last 9 World Cup competitions. This is the third longest such series in the 21st century. It was worse in 2004 (13 competitions) and in 2008-2009 (10 competitions). I omitted competitions in which Poles did not take part at all,” wrote Bucholz. If our compatriots do not improve during the Four Hills Tournament, at the end of this extremely important event they may equal the record, and even break it during the Polish Tournament.
