Halvor Egner Granerud: the many personalities of ski jumping’s breakthrough star
His latest season may have stunned the world but behind the skier who achieved the unimaginable lies much more than just a breakout competitor. Underneath the talent is a man fuelled by his passions.
Ski Jumping
There are a whole host of superlatives that could be used to describe Norway’s Halvor Egner Granerud’s 2020/2021 ski jumping season.
Spectacular, magical, monumental.
From the ranks of relative anonymity, the 25-year-old propelled himself to the highest heights of his sport after he clinched 11 World Cups and a whopping 1,572 points to finish the season as the undisputed victor, brushing aside the likes of three-time Olympic gold medallist Kamil Stoch and Germany’s Karl Geiger to claim the crown.
It’s not a surprise then, that his explosive entry into the top rungs of the ski jumping ranks sees him often compared to a galactic comet or a hurtling meteor. He did, after all, finish the 2019/2020 season in 61st place.
But behind the upstart who was once compelled to work as a Kindergarten teacher to make ends meet - there is an athlete fired up by his passions and together they make him one of ski jumping’s greatest emerging characters.
As the 2021/2022 ski jumping season gets into full swing, meet the fierce, fiery, and fun sides of Halvor Egner Granerud.
Halvor Egner Granerud: Crystal Ball over Olympic gold
When Granerud posted his fifth consecutive World Cup win the man from Norway carved out from the snow a remarkable piece of history.
It was the first time a Norwegian jumper had ever triumphed in five competitions in succession and saw him surpass the previous record of four-in-a-row held by other prominent countrymen Lillehammer 1994 gold medallist Espen Bredesen and former world champion Ole Bremseth.
After his conquest, which saw him fend off the heaps of pressure piled on Markus Eisenbichler, Granerud was speechless:
“It’s incredible. I’m lost for words,” he shared with the FIS afterwards.
Then after the Christmas break, the Norwegian showed no signs of relenting.
He picked up an additional six World Cup titles and a silver medal in the mixed team normal hill competition the FIS 2021 World Ski Championships.
Having tasted such sweet, indomitable success Granerud has now developed an insatiable appetite for more.
He is so serious of replicating the form that changed his life dramatically that he has set his priorities accordingly, putting greater emphasis on the World Cup over and above and the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics:
“For me this [Beijing 2022] is the single most important event of the season,” Granerud shared with Eurosport.pl.
“But as I mentioned, defending the Crystal Ball is most important. For me, winning the World Cup shows that you are the best of the year.”
Though preference for a second Crystal Ball over an Olympic gold medal may seem curious, it points to the scope of his ambitions. Such is the ferocity of Granerud’s competitive spirit that winning one great event alone is not enough; only repeated total domination will do.
“I’d like to do it again, but I know it’s very difficult,” the ski jumper continued to Eurosport.pl.
“Great self-confidence is extremely important, also what you get from training. In the previous cycle, I had no problem with it, and I hope it will be the same now.”
Learning to tame the fiery side
Feeding a winning desire means being passionate and, on last year’s circuit, Granerud revealed just how deep within him the competitive fire burns.
With the backing of his World Cup wins Granerud entered ski jumping’s infamous Four Hills tournament as the hot favourite.
However, substandard finishes and a resurgent Kamil Stoch meant the Norwegian finished 0.4 points off the overall podium.
The turning point for Granerud came at the third leg of the competition in Innsbruck. He was only in 29th position after the first round, and while in the end, able to move up 14 places the weekend outing lost him his overall lead.
In the heat of the moment the frustrated Norwegian let loose to reporters and in his disappointment took aim at Stoch. Realising afterwards that his competitive temper had got the better of him Granerud subsequently apologised on social media for his outburst:
“I just want to apologise for the comments today… it was an outcry of frustration about my own result and my previous results on this hill,” said the ski jumper.
“I never meant to say Kamil isn’t a good ski jumper, he is my ski jumping idol… I think Kamil is one of the best ever.”
Hagor Egner Granerud: the fun flyer
While the Norwegian is an intense competitor on and off the hill, he also has a fun side that he loves to indulge.
As he made his breakthrough, fans and journalists were sent scrambling trying to find out more about this phenom ripping up the script. To their great surprise they began unearthing remarkable things about Granerud. For one, he is the great-grandson of the popular Norwegian writer Thorbjorn Egner.
It was all rather wholesome until something cheekier appeared.
In depths of the internet a video emerged of Granerud and a fellow ski jumping dropping down the famous hill at Oslo-Holmenkollen together, without any clothes on.
‘Our ski eagles are chasing this naked Norwegian’ German newspaper Bild wrote at the time of the video’s discovery, poking fun.
Only 16 years old at the time, not even then the adrenaline-seeking skier could have predicted he – or it - would blow up the way that it did. Fortunately for the Crystal Ball winner, the video didn’t get him into too much trouble and he admits he has no intentions of repeating such a feat.
Although, speaking to Eurosport.pl, he does insist that having fun is important to him:
“I think I’m in such a place in my career that it would be stupid to do something like that naked right now. However, you must have pleasure during training, and it is close to my heart.”
“Growing as athletes we always wanted to have fun and that was the most important thing in my opinion.”
So, does this mean that we’ve seen all there is to see of Granerud’s more fiendish side?
“I did something similar in the summer, but I don’t want to talk about it yet. You’ll see something special soon.”
The ski jumping competition at Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games will run from February 5 to February 14. Find the schedule for the competition here.