If You Think You Lose

Thomas Morgenstern’s unshakeable lightness of spirit rests on the solid foundation of his view of the world. And the fact that he is turned on by what he does. For instance winning Gold at the Olympic Games.

In the K90 competition the runner-up after the first jump finished in front of the leader of the first round. But for Thomas Morgenstern this did not equate to victory in his first Olympic appearance, but to a rather unsatisfactory 9th place. Variable wind conditions led to disappointment for the four best athletes of the first round.

But everything was to change after that.

First in the second individual event, the men’s large hill competition. Going into the final round, Morgenstern was again in second place, after a jump of 133 meters. The Austrian, appearing in his first Olympic Games, then soared 140 meters to capture the gold medal. It was his first gold in these Games, but it wasn’t to be his last: in the team event two days later, the 19-year-old jumped to another first-place finish – and this time it was even a historic one, with Morgi’s winning jump of 140.5 meters giving Austria its first ever Olympic gold medal in the ski jumping team event. “It all hasn’t quite hit me yet,” says Morgi. “During the approach I was just thinking: just do what you can do. After all, you have nothing to lose. It’s simply incredible. I’m overjoyed.”

“If you brake, you lose,” says the race-car driver. “If you think, you lose,” says Thomas Morgenstern. Thomas Morgenstern is 19 years old, Austrian and a ski jumper – in other words, one of those people who streak down a ramp at a breakneck speed, only to find that there is nothing at the end but a long drop-off. An absolute must in this sport, at least from the perspective of an outsider, is courage bordering on folly. And, in fact, even seasoned jumpers admit that a certain amount of will-power is required every time they have to push off from the bar and hurtle themselves down the ramp. Thomas Morgenstern takes a slightly less complicated view of this: “Sometimes I just have to laugh out loud while I’m skiing down, simply because it’s such a cool feeling.”

Return from the Dead in Kuusamo

Thomas Morgenstern says it’s “very cool to have to rely totally on your ability.” And he had a lot of ability at a very early age. In January 2003, Morgenstern, who was born in Carinthia in 1986, won his first World Cup competition, the second-youngest jumper in history to accomplish this. At the time he was 16 years and three months old. He drew attention to himself a second time that year – this time unintentionally: in Kuusamo, Finland, “Morgi” experienced every jumper’s nightmare. He was hit by a gust of wind, lost control of his flight, turned head-over-heels, crashed onto the slope, flipped over several times and slid motionlessly down the incline. A “horrific fall,” according to the newspapers. But Thomas got up virtually unhurt (“Except for a cut and an enormous bruise on my thigh, I was fine.”). Four weeks later he jumped to a second-place finish in Oberstdorf. Cool? “No idea. But I simply have no fear. My life is predetermined. Whatever is supposed to happen is going to happen anyway.”

The Secret of the Silver “K”

Some of the predetermined things in Morgenstern’s athletic life that have already occurred: three gold medals at Junior World Championships, two World Championship titles in team jumping, several World Cup victories. On top of that, Thomas’ best distance in ski flying is 225.5 meters, making him the youngest person ever to fly more than 225 meters. And in 2005, he jumped more than anyone else. With a total distance of 7,078.5 metres (accumulated in world cup jumps), Thomas earned the “2005 Ski Jump Award”, beating out the title defender Janne Ahonnen who soared 6,505 metres in 2004.

But despite Thomas’ belief in predetermination, he still likes to have his lucky charm with him: a chain around his neck with a silver “K” as a pendant. The “K” stands for Kristina, Thomas’ girlfriend. They spend their free time together pursuing common hobbies like mountain biking (“she’s much faster than I am in that”), gambling on PlayStation (they are partial to a ski-jumping game featuring a figure named Timmo Morgenstund, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Thomas), and skiing – Alpine. For Thomas, the activities they enjoy together are less important than the fact that “with her, I can just forget everything for a while and think about something else besides ski jumping. That’s important for me.”