The new DSV head coach Stefan Horngacher looks positively on the season, which starts at the weekend, despite injury bad luck.

The German ski jumping team is not yet able to train with the full line-up. After David Siegel and Severin Freund were injured last season and are still out of action, Olympic champion Andreas Wellinger was also injured last summer. „It's definitely not going to be anything for Andi this winter,"; explains Horngacher. This season would be too early for David Siegel as well. Although the 23-year-old Baiersbronner has already entered the specialized training, too many summer jumps are still missing. Even the 2014 World Ski Flying Champion, Severin Freund, will have to wait and see how he develops. While it already looked very good in the meantime, he had some minor problems again recently: "Not everything is completely cured yet", explains Horngacher.

The 50-year-old Austrian sees the previous summer preparation as a highly intensive preparation phase with a lot of training and good jumps. In general, he sees the German team in the right direction, but also with air to the top. The German head coach doesn't value the Summer Grand Prix too highly: "It wasn't always as high as I had imagined it to be, as it was partly shown in training. We also had adverse weather conditions at some competitions".

As his goal for the coming season, Horngacher has set himself a place among the top three in the nation ranking. Much more important, however, is "that we bring what we acquired in the summer into the winter, improve it during the winter and do good ski jumping". Even though the team is still in the finding process, the Austrian sees a good development and is looking forward to the coming winter season.

The hope for the first overall victory of a DSV jumper since Sven Hannawald 2001/2002 lives for the German fans: After second and third place by Markus Eisenbichler and Stephan Leyhe from last year, both also have chances this year to jump on the podium. After his 10th place in last year's overall World Cup and as best German of the Summer Grand Prix, Karl Geiger can also be counted on.