Ski jumper Peter Prevc decides to end his career after this season
Planica, 6 February - Slovenia's ski jumping champion Peter Prevc has decided to end what has been one of the most successful careers in the history of the sport after this season.
Ljubljana
Ski jumper Peter Prevc.
Photo: Bor Slana/STA
File photo
The 31-year-old, who will talk about his decision to the press later today, is bidding farewell after 15 World Cup seasons, one of which will be hard to ever replicate.
Prevc, the eldest of the five Prevc siblings, has won seven medals at major events, including an Olympic gold medal in the mixed competition in Beijing 2022.
In Sochi 2014, he won silver and bronze individually and moreover took Olympic silver in the team event in Beijing. He also has three medals from ski jumping World Championships - one team bronze from 2011 and individual silver and bronze medals from 2013.
Prevc's peak came in the 2015/2016 season, in which he set a series of milestones. He bagged 15 of his 23 Word Cup victories in that winter, stood on the podium 22 times in what were 29 events and collected 2,303 points, which remain record figures.
"Such a season will be hard to repeat, I'm already warning you now," Prevc told reporters at the time in what would foreshadow the rest of his career in which he lost regular contact to the very top athletes.
While he was also besieged by injuries, he always managed to climb back, last winning a World Cup event in 2020 and missing an individual Olympic medal in Beijing two years ago by a hair's length. He is presently ranked 13th in the World Cup.
Prevc has also been excellent on giant hills and became in 2015 the first person to cross the 250 metre-mark. He shares the record of three victories in the overall ski flying rankings. He was Ski Flying World Champion in 2016 and won bronze in 2014, while also bagging gold with the team in 2022 and this year.
He will finish his career with at least 35 World Cup victories, having also contributed to all of the 12 Slovenian wins in team events. He is 12th in the perpetual rankings for the most individual victories and the most podiums, 57.
Prevc, who has two more second-place finishes in the overall World Cup rankings, will conclude his career at the traditional March World Cup finals in Planica, where he has stood on the podium 18 times so far.