A. Stoeckl - Team Strength [interview]

Team stre n gth

Did you expect Anders Fannemel to perform so good in the beginning of the year?

If Alexander Stoeckl was supposed to point out the most unlucky guy among his team last season, it would be Anders Fannemel. This time the tables have turned and the beginning of the year turned out unexpectedly well for the Norwegian. We met the coach after the competition in Garmisch-Partenkirschen, where Fannemel ended up third and was the best ski jumper in the team.

He had quite good results at the beginning of the season.

After Engelberg I saw he is able to win a competition. In Garmisch it was not such a big surprise but it is always nice to have one of the guys on the podium there. The first competition of the year is always difficult for the athletes because of the tension and media interests. Expectations are always high. It was really nice to see that he managed to perform his good jumps and ended up on the podium.

Last season wasn’t that kind for him.

Has he changed a lot before this winter?

– He hasn’t changed much. I think he has changed some things in the physical training. He started to do some different stuff there. Additionally we just tried to optimize the technique on the hill together with the equipment on an individual level bit more. I think he just improved mentally. He is more self-confident now as compared to last year. He was in a stable shape through the summer and this is the reason of his good results now.

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Do you think it was better for him to come to the Four Hills Tournament not as a leader or someone who is expected to win?

– It helps. For some of the athletes it is really important that they are not in the position of the leader. I think it was quite good for him that he wasn’t the favorite.

I have to ask about Kenneth Gangnes.

The news before the season was terrible for everyone. How hard was the situation for you, as a coach?

– It was more difficult on a personal level. You know how good the athletes are and how much effort they put into being where they are. You see how they are devoted to the sport. It is really bitter when an athlete misses the chance

for which he has been fighting for throughout the whole year.

He had the same injury a year ago. Now the ACL is torn again and he has to go through the whole process one more time.

It is extremely hard to see this kind of situation and observe how everything just collapsed because of one small mistake and unfortunate landing.

How hard is it to manage to keep the good atmosphere among the team in a situation where you lost its leader?

– It was quite difficult at the beginning when it happened. Kenneth is a part of the team, we can say he is the leader of the group. He is the most experienced guy in the team so his absence is really hard for us. On the other hand it leaves an open room and more possibilities for the other athletes to have a different role in the national team. For me as a coach it was a really interesting thing to watch how the situation develops inside of the team when the leader is gone. So far it worked out well. We will have Kenneth as a team member. Not as a ski jumper but as some kind of an expert as long as he’s injured. He joined us during the Four Hills Tournament and has been spending time with the whole time since Innsbruck.

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interview: Martyna Ostrowska photos: Dominika Wisniowska / Przemyslaw Wardega

Can you say how is he doing right now and how do you see his future?

– He’s doing and developing good as he is quite experienced in that injury. He knows what to do. The therapy is working out pretty well. He has improved but he doesn’t make any decisions on what will happen after he’ll finish his recovery. I want to keep this open. He still calls himself a sportsman. There’s still a lot of rehabilitation to do. When he’s done, he will make the final decision whether he’s going to continue with sport or if he’s starting with doing something different. It’s all up to him.

You take part in a lot of projects connecting coaching and ski jumping.

You have been working with Norwegians for a pretty long time. What is the best way to motivate athletes?

– My personal opinion is that I can not motivate somebody else. They only can be motivated by themselves. I can only give them tools, I can open new possibilities. I can show them where to go. I can use my own motivation to show the athlete how to handle things and how he can put effort into everything he does everyday. Then you may expect that athletes will do this in a similar way. I don’t think you can motivate someone to do something. The motivation has to come from the inside.

Last season you said that you weren’t 100% motivated all of the time. You finally decided on signing a contract for next five years. How can you motivate yourself to continue on working with the team on a stable and high level?

– There was a period of time after the season ended when I was not sure how things will go in the future. Maybe I was a little bit tired. We made some changes in the team. We have changed my role as a coach. I am more of a team leader or a manager. It took me some time to

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find my position again. At a certain point I got to the moment when I thought it didn’t matter if I am here or not. Things are going really well. We have developed a really good structure behind the athletes, also for home training in different regions. The coaches in the ski federation developed extremely well. The system inside is ran by itself. Then I realized that I started to put myself aside. I got to the point when I asked myself a question: am I needed? Then I was lucky to meet a tennis sport chief in Sweden. He was a sport chief for many years. He has a very long experience in a much more worldwide sport than ski jumping. He was in the same situation. At the time he realized that his duty is to keep the continuity and to show the direction. Maybe not doing so much himself but being sure that everything is going in the right direction. That was a really good advice. I put myself in a slightly different position and it worked out perfectly for me. Thanks to that I have more energy. It also gave some more space for rest of the coaches and their progress.

You are staying with the team till the next Winter Olympic Games. How do you see your role in the future?

– I will be someone between a coach and a manager. I want to remain being a coach, because I still love this part of my job. I like working with athletes and I need this for myself. I will be more focused on being a team leader to keep the balance and check if everything is working fine. I’ll be a supervisor of what is going on. Maybe giving some input and ideas for the coaches. We still have some possibilities that could be expanded.

Can you say you have developed a system of ski jumping in Norway?

– I think we are on a good way to do so.

You’re never finished with the system.

Ski jumping is some kind of a culture

Alexander Stoeckl and Norway has a very long history with this sport. What we have to do is to adjust our ideas to the culture and try to build the system. It is not only about me but about a bunch of people who have developed ski jumping and pushed everything in a certain direction. This process never stops. I think we have done a good job but there are still many things we have to do to be successful all of the time.

Norway used to be good with one athlete a year, but it didn’t have constant good results for one athlete or more the whole time. This is the next step we have to take. We have to continue with the good work and be more professional in certain areas. We have still a lot of work to do.

Mostly, Norwegians are more successful when they are older than Germans or Austrians. Is it also a part of the system?

– This depends on many different things.

The one thing about this is the school system in Norway. Last part of the school here is from the age of 16 until the age of 19. In Austria, for example, you start with children around 14-15 years old. In Schigymansium Stams, which is really successful, the athletes start the professional work earlier. In Norway it takes more time before they start the real work. There’s not enough time for the sport and personal development. It makes a delay in everything.

This is the reason why athletes at the age of 20 or 21 compete in the World Cup for the first time. In Austria they do this when they’re around 16 or 17 years old. There are also many differences in how the clubs work. They don’t have to do so much ski jumping there. Actually for them it’s better to do less ski jumping and more sport in general. In their primary trainings they should be focused on basic things. This is one of the biggest challenges in Norway.

We see many guys on the small hills who are quite good, quite early. Then we have a gap. The development of a young athlete

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has to be complete. We have lack of competence in this area. We have to be sure that people spend enough time on basics instead of going to the hill and jumping.

How working in Stams helped you in your coaching career?

We set a goal for the Olympic season together in the end of the last winter.

We made some analysis and conducted some discussions about the targets for the upcoming season. The most important task is to fight for the gold medal in the team competition. This indicates that you have four athletes on an extremely high level.

– It helped me a lot. When you work in Stams you learn that the the athletes are the center of your universe. They come to school when they are 14. Your responsibility is to work not only on their physics and techniques but also on their personality. You have to take care of a whole person. This is the thing which has to develop in Norway – making sure that you work with a person and you have to keep this perspective. On the World Cup level you only have to work with the sports part, not the personality. This is a good thing that you get in Stams – athletes who are fully developed as a person. So you don’t have to deal with these personality issues anymore.

You work with young guys, with different personalities. How can you handle avoiding arguments, misunderstandings and stressful situations?

– It’s always a challenge, but it is a nice one. It is interesting to get to know the person better. I think that inside the team we are extremely good in accepting differences in our personalities.

This has always been an important part of the Norwegian philosophy. You have to have a high level of acceptance and loyalty to the system. It is not only about us coaches, but also about the athletes and about ski jumping itself. We represent a sport which is the most important thing to us and we have to do this in a very good and positive way. To do this we have to work together as a team. That strong theory makes it easy.

When you started to work in Norway,

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did you find many difficulties – cultural misunderstandings or something like that?

landscape but it’s way different. Sometimes I miss Austria.

– This is a normal thing in the beginning.

I came to Norway and I didn’t speak the same language. I spoke in English all the time. In a situation like that you miss the part of how people react on what you say.

It was very important to me to learn the language, to get to understand the Norwegian culture, especially when it comes to ski jumping. There were some misunderstanding at the beginning. Now I feel more comfortable. I understand more and I can read people’s intentions better.

On the other hand, is there something that you really appreciate about living in Norway?

Is there still something in Norway which is strange for you or which you can not stand?

– You get pressure in a different way so I wouldn’t say this is unmotivating. You feel less pressure from the outside but more pressure from the the inside.

– There are some certain dialects which I can not understand. I think the last part of learning the language is when you understand sarcasm. When somebody says something and you should feel if it is sarcasm or not. I am not there yet but I’m trying.

Do you still miss Austria a bit?

– During the Four Hills Tournament when we were driving from Garmisch and we were going through Seefeld to the valley of Innsbruck I felt a little bit homesick. I miss high mountains and this kind of scenery. Norway has a fantastic

– I really appreciate the openness of the country. People are close to the nature and they are less stressed than in any other part of the Europe. Time is not everything there. Norwegians don’t rush anything. This is really positive most of the times but it can be also frustrating sometimes.

Can it be unmotivating as well when you feel much less pressure in work?

You come to Austria for a training camp every year. Is it because you miss the place or about good facilities?

– It’s a combination of many things.

I think there is a good environment and very good infrastructure. We have everything we need. We have ski jumping hills in Stams and Innsbruck. We can also use all of the facilities in Schigymnasium in Stams. We have a possibility to play golf with the Austrian team. Finland joined us last year as well. This is also developing

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Alexander Stoeckl

in a way. It is always a nice kind of a fun part during the hard pre-season trainings.

What are your expectations before the Winter Olympic Games?

– We set a goal for the Olympic season together in the end of the last winter. We made some analysis and conducted some discussions about the targets for the upcoming season. The most important task is to fight for the gold medal in the team competition. This indicates that you have four athletes on an extremely high level.

During the previous Olympic Games Daniel-Andre Tande was a young guy and got qualified just before the tournament.

Now he is the leader of the team and the expectations are higher. How do you handle the athlete in this situation?

– The Norwegians have always been strong as a team. As I said, this is also a part of the culture. We have strongly developed the team spirit. We are finally extremely good in finding individual solutions in the technical training. Thanks to that we have more athletes on a high level at the same time.

Last year there were many discussions about the equipment in the team. Ski jumpers were a little bit disappointed that they were far behind the other nations. You have done small equipment revolution…

– He seems to be more confident now.

He is more experienced of course. The choice to take him to Sochi was perfect at the time. There was a big discussion on deciding between him and another athlete [Tom Hilde]. They were on the same level. One athlete was quite old, the other one was young. We decided we should take Daniel because we saw his potential. It was good for him to get this Olympics experience. Now when he goes to PyoengChang he will be ready. He will know how it works and what to expect.

Yes, I think that decision was right.

– We have changed one thing. My assistant coach, Magnus Brevig is now a leader of our Science Department as we call it. He coordinates all the details, with some help from the university. He’s searching for some new information and possibilities that we can use. It was a really clever step because he is extremely motivated to do this job. We can see that ski jumper’s equipment is becoming really important. It has been important before as well but now it seems to be much more significant. We have more details which we can make big differences with. The biggest step was to say that this is also very important. We are doing everything to develop our team also in this area.

We found some small details that have a massive influence on that.

As a team you perform unbelievably good this season. What makes you so strong?

Can we say that when the athlete knows that there is a special work done for his equipment, he feels more confident?

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– It makes a big difference when athletes know that we have changed something for them. Even if the change is small the athlete feels better. He knows he’s going to compete with just as good equipment as his rivals have. This is really important for their self-confidence.

As a team you took part in a TV series in Norway. What was your first impression?

– We started with this project one year ago. We had TV crew with us for the first time in Pyeongchang. Firstly it was a strange feeling to have a camera following you in every single moment. It can take a long time to actually forget that camera follows you all of the time. They were very professional and didn’t disturb us at all. Now we can watch this on television and it is really interesting to see ourselves from another perspective. It is the first time when I have a chance to see myself and my work as a coach. I have a deeper insight and feedback on myself. It is a bit strange to see myself on TV but it can be really developing. We are still in the process of recording. We had cameraman with us during the Four Hills Tournament and it will be continued till the Olympics.

What should I wish you for such a busy season?

– Good health, because the most important thing is to not have any injuries. Positive spirit and good performance!

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