Anna Odine Stroem of Norway hoped for silver and ended up with gold in Olympic ski jumping

PREDAZZO, Italy — Anna Odine Stroem entered the women's normal ski jumping competition Saturday thinking the best she could do was finish second.

With a consistent and smooth performance under pressure, the Norwegian did much better, seizing the gold medal most assumed would be won by Slovenian favorite Nika Prevc, who has dominated the sport this season.

“I didn’t jump (in practice) yesterday and I saw Nika was in a league of her own — as she usually is,” Stroem said. “So I thought we were all competing for silver here.”

Prevc was tearful taking silver and Nozomi Maruyama of Japan was jubilant in winning bronze.

Stroem has come back from a serious knee injury in 2023 to reach fourth place in the World Cup standings this season. Prevc sits at the top by a large margin over Maruyama. Based on those standings, they started the first round in reverse of their ranking, with Prevc going last.

Going into the final jump, Prevc trailed Stroem by a single point and Maruyama was in third, two-tenths of a point behind Prevc.

Because Stroem was in first place after one round, she was the final skier to jump — right after Prevc.

The crowd was silent as she sat on the bar atop the steep in-run.

“I thought this is going to be hard,” Stroem said at a news conference after being awarded her medal.

She said she went through a mental checklist to focus and then looked down the hill, where a green light showed the longest distance anyone had landed.

“I saw that green was very far down so I just thought I’ve got to get over that,” she said.

The crowd roared as she appeared to clear the mark but she couldn’t hear the noise because she was going so fast, she said.

“I’m going to be honest, I didn’t quite believe it until my teammates hugged me,” she said.

Her final jump was 101 meters (331 feet) for a total score of 267.3 points, edging Prevc by 1.1 points.

“Luckily, I managed to do my things well and I suspect Nika didn’t do hers quite as well as she wished, as she's done earlier,” Stroem said. "But I reckon she's going to be hard to beat in the big hill.”

Prevc, last year's world champ and record holder for the longest women's jump, said too much pressure had been put on her before the event. Coach Jurij Tepes said she made two technical mistakes that cost her.

Prevc said she’s happy her first Olympic competition is behind her and she can focus on two events ahead: the mixed team event Tuesday and the women’s large hill jump Feb. 15.

“I’m very happy with my first Olympic medal,” she said. “My childhood dreams are coming true. Now I will continue and go on.”

There was a consolation prize of sorts for Prevc by becoming the first sister to join a brother — two in her case — to have also won Olympic medals in the sport.

Prevc follows in the footsteps of her brothers, Peter, a four-time Olympic medalist who won gold in the mixed team jump four years ago in Beijing, and Cene, who shared a team silver with his brother in Beijing in the team event.

The famous Prevc ski jumping family could make more Olympic history Monday when brother Domen, who has also been dominant this year, competes in the men’s normal hill event. If he wins a medal, it would mark the first time brother and sister ski jumpers have medaled at the same Olympics.

Depending on the outcome of that event, the two could also team up Tuesday.

The gold medal was only the second for women ski jumpers from Norway — the country that invented the sport and has long dominated competition — since women began ski jumping in the Olympics in 2014. Maren Lundby won gold in the 2018 Pyeongchang Games.

It also marks a bright spot for Norway, which was tainted by scandal at last year’s World Championships, when coaches on the men’s team were caught tampering with ski suits to give its two top men an advantage.

Head coach Magnus Brevik, assistant coach Thomas Lobben and staff member Adrian Livelten were recently banned from the sport for 18 months for tampering with the suits before the men’s large hill event.

Norwegian ski jumpers Marius Lindvik and Johann André Forfang accepted three-month suspensions that allowed them to compete in this season’s events.

Asked about the scandal, Stroem made it clear that the women weren’t implicated.

“We have put that behind us now and tried to stick together and just work hard,” she said. “I hope that my performance here today can inspire the boys to do well.”