Ski Jumper Karl Geiger: 7 Facts about Germany's Olympic Hope

Karl Geiger has already won four World Championship titles with the team. In addition, he has won three more World Championship medals as an individual jumper. At his home World Championships 2021 in his birthplace Oberstdorf, Geiger even managed to win a medal in every single decision. In the World Cup and at the Olympic Games it just didn't want to work out with the title - yet. In the overall World Cup, second place was Geiger's best final ranking in the winter of 2019/2020. Geiger got off to the best start in the 2021/22 World Cup: With victory in the opener in Nizhny Tagil and another two second places in Nizhny Tagil and Kuusamo, Geiger took the lead in the overall ranking. At the 2018 Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, Geiger took silver with the German team. Now the crowning glory followed at the Olympic Games in Beijing: the gold medal after a sensational finish in the individual.

The rather introverted "ski jump engineer" Karl Geiger is a man who makes the impossible possible thanks to hard work. Over the years, the trained "Bachelor of Engineering" and terrific analyst has come up with a perfect concept based on "determination and willpower". When others weaken in competition, Karl Geiger can often take it up a notch mentally. "I get myself into the tunnel. And when it comes down to it, I press on and attack at full throttle."

That Geiger "only" finished sixth in the overall World Cup 2020/21 also had private reasons: At the beginning of the then ski jumping winter the German head coach Stefan Horngacher sent him home to his heavily pregnant wife Franziska on the weekend before the ski jumping World Cup. Geiger had married his long-time girlfriend in September 2020. Their daughter Luisa was born in December 2020.

Karl Geiger stands out among the ski jumpers with his pink helmet. The background to the unusual choice of colour is a sponsor: the wafer manufacturer Manner is one of Geiger's partners. Since the 2019/2020 season, Geiger's Fischer skis have also been adorned with the "Ubiquinol" logo. This is a micronutrient for amateur athletes and consumers from the company Kaneka.

An overview of Karl Geiger's sponsors and partners:

• Manner
• Fischer
• tri:ceps
• Kaneka
• Oberstdorf
• Junghans

In the 2020/21 season, Karl Geiger was number four among ski jumpers in this ranking with a total of 119,900 Swiss francs ( approx. 115,000 euros) in prize money.

In total, Geiger came to earnings of over 550,000 Swiss francs (approx. 530,000 euros) from World Cup prize money alone in his career.

This is how much prize money Karl Geiger earned in the World Cup seasons (Source: FIS)

The ski flying world champion also likes it airy off the hill: Karl Geiger's hobbies include paragliding. He also listens to rock music and plays the Styrian harmonica himself.

Karl Geiger has been among the world's best in ski jumping for years. But at least in terms of social media fame even some of his German colleagues are far ahead of him. Andreas Wellinger has almost twice as many Instagram followers as Geiger and also Markus Eisenbichler is ahead of Geiger.

The top 10 German jumpers and their Instagram followers (as of December 2021):