Fire lost

Kramer: “Most of the time I feel nothing”

Sara Marita Kramer lacks the fire of earlier days.

(Bild: AFP/Geir Olsen)

Ski jumper Sara Marita Kramer has lost even less momentum in the still young World Cup season than last winter. "Most of the time I feel nothing. I miss the little girl who jumped over the hills with a big smile on her face." 

Her last podium finish was more than two years ago, and the last of her 15 World Cup victories to date came a week after the 2022 Winter Olympics. She missed the major event back then due to coronavirus, but the World Cup recently took her to Zhangjiakou. That didn't make her happy.

"I'm obviously not happy about my current results and was hoping for a better start to the season," Kramer wrote in an Instagram post. She had already realized last season that something had changed in her. "I don't feel like myself on the hill. It's hard, I've lost access to the system where it just clicked." In her more successful days, the athlete often thought that she just had to get into her flying system for it to work.

Sara Marita Kramer

(Bild: GEPA pictures)

Even now, there are days when she takes steps forward. "But most of the time I feel nothing. I miss the little girl who jumped over the jumps with a big smile." Her conviction is no longer what it was, the 23-year-old said. You need that inner fire that distinguishes exceptional athletes from others. "At some point in the last few years, I lost that fire," said Kramer. But she is working on getting it back.

"I feel that it's not over yet"
 "I feel that there's still a spark in me and I feel in my heart that it's not over yet." The 2021/22 overall World Cup winner wants to give herself time to get through it. She has no guarantee that she will regain this fire. "I believe that it's not over yet." She hopes that one day she will be able to give something back to everyone who believes in her.

Kramer has finished 16th and 23rd at the two World Cup stops of the World Cup winter so far in Lillehammer, and in Zhangjiakou she missed out on the competition after finishing 28th in qualifying in 49th place. With 26 points, Kramer is only Austria's number five in the World Cup rankings in 23rd place. With 15 World Cup victories, the 2021 Team World Champion is tied with Eva Pinkelnig from Vorarlberg and only one success behind the red-white-red record holder Daniela Iraschko-Stolz.