Athletes Retirements Thread

[Monzanator 5,127]

2 minutes ago, Vojthas said:

Polish Ski Federation has more a less the air proportions: 78% of nitrogen (which is men's ski jumping), 21% of oxygen (which is women's cross-country - earlier based on Kowalczyk as an athlete, now she is building the team of her heiresses, which should have been done by the federation ten years ago) and "the rest" (mostly women's ski jumping as they now seem to be looked forward to complete the mixed teams with the men + the granddaughter of federation's president started her career).

 

What's more - nordic combined has its "sports director" together with ski jumping - as you might suppose, Małysz concentrates mostly on ski jumping.

 

Now Kupczak as the only remaining senior athlete will train with the Czech team (Mateja, one of Małysz's teammates from late 90s-early 00s, will join their coaching staff). The juniors will be trained by... federation's president son (also Małysz's teammate from SLC2002 - did I mention that current federation president was the ski jumping NT coach then?)

 

Tomasz Pochwala was forced to resign or they straight kicked him out? He was a poor ski jumper and I have no idea how he got the NC head coaching job (other than having the right connections  ).

[Vojthas 949]

1 minute ago, Monzanator said:

Tomasz Pochwala was forced to resign or they straight kicked him out? He was a poor ski jumper and I have no idea how he got the NC head coaching job (other than having the right connections  ).

As far as I remember, he finished his career as the national champion in the NC And yes, he got kicked out - as Kupczak fell down from being 6th best ski jumper in the World Cup to 15th and the other athletes... not developing as well (to say gently).

[Monzanator 5,127]

16 minutes ago, Olympian1010 said:

I’m so sad about the Nordic Combined situation. It’s exactly like you and I have said. These guys should have had zero success. However, they were winning medals at the Universiade (and I don’t think Poland generally gets a ton of those in the winter) and doing amazingly well at the Wolrd Championships. It’s such a shame. Poland kills so many of its promising talents. Of course it’s not an isolated problem to Poland, but you hate to see that anywhere.

 

Overall, the NC international level has taken a nose-dive in the last 10-15 years. It's basically Norway vs Germany plus some Austria and Japanese one-offs. Finland is barely more competitive than ski jumping. Czech Republic, Italy and France (post Lamy Chappuis) are running on fumes and I don't even know what happened to USA? From Todd Lodwick and Bill DeMong to nothing in less than a decade. Have they closed Steambot Springs down or what?

 

Our alpine skiing hangs on Maryna Gasienica-Daniel. Maciej Bydlinski who got a rare Top 30 in these Kitzbuhel or Wengen combined events was told he's "too old" at age 27 and became an EuroSport expert instead. Snowboard relied on the Ligocki family clan for most of 20 years but they all became too old and retired (Jagna Marczulajtis became MP and she was the only non-Ligocki snowboarder with any success in the last 20 years). Actually we still have Kwiatkowski and A.Krol in parallel events but parallels are losing ground overall to all the freestyle events. Our freestyle skiing was a one-person squad (Karolina Riemen-Zerebecka). After she retired, we have nobody. What else? The Justyna Kowalczyk success era converted in us building one 5km loop which she called Universiade-level. Now we have some promising juniors and maybe Lukas Bauer and Martin Bajcicak inject some life. We should really focus on sprints IMO.

 

The best winter sport we have outside from ski jumping (with our senior team getting older by the minute, we could bomb out after Beijing OG anyway) is biathlon but of course that's separate from Skiing Federation and maybe that's why it hasn't been ruined yet.

[Gianlu33 6,029]

Another retirement in the Italian winter sport team.

Elena Runggaldier, the most winning italian athlete ever in sky jumping, announced her retirement.

She won a silver at the 2011 WCh

 

[heywoodu 16,465]

37 minutes ago, Gianlu33 said:

Another retirement in the Italian winter sport team.

Elena Runggaldier, the most winning italian athlete ever in sky jumping, announced her retirement.

She won a silver at the 2011 WCh

 

 

 

[Monzanator 5,127]

Anna Veith (nee Fenninger) will announce her retirement very soon according to Austrian press.

[heywoodu 16,465]

7 minutes ago, Monzanator said:

Anna Veith (nee Fenninger) will announce her retirement very soon according to Austrian press.

 

Too bad she never got close to her best results anymore after her injury period, it already is one hell of an achievement she somehow managed to pull an Olympic silver medal out of the hat after that.

[Monzanator 5,127]

Just now, heywoodu said:

 

Too bad she never got close to her best results anymore after her injury period, it already is one hell of an achievement she somehow managed to pull an Olympic silver medal out of the hat after that.

 

Two injuries actually. She tore the ACL in her right knee again in January 2019 and she really struggled for pace last season. She was more or less competitive after the first ACL but no longer a consistent threat for the overall and basically quit doing giants slaloms after that.

[Wumo 3,035]

 Katja Visnar (Cross-Country Skiing) has announced her retirement:

 

 

 

[Griff88 2,021]

Indonesia's Tontowi Ahmad announced his retirement via Instagram