Thomas Aasen Markeng is back

Thomas Aasen Markeng, the 2019 Junior World Champion, who crashed at the World Cup in Klingenthal in December 2019, has now started with jumping training again.

It was one of the toughest moments of last season: Only a week after his fifth place in the World Cup in Nizhny Tagil (RUS), the then 19-year-old Thomas Aasen Markeng fell after the landing in Klingenthal. He tore his ACL and damaged the meniscus. Now Markeng is back on the hill.

Norway's head coach Alexander Stoeckl is happy, that the extremely talent jumper could join the team again: 
"Thomas started jumping again about two weeks ago, he was training with us in Lillehammer and Trondheim. Thomas took his time before making his first jumps after the injury and prepared himself very well for his comeback on the hill together with the medical staff", Stoeckl explains. "Right now he is making two or three jumps during in each session in order to not strain the knee. His technique and the movement pattern is the same as it was before the crash, that's very good", the Austrian analyzes the jumps of Thomas Aasen Markeng.

Alexander Stoeckl might even name Markeng to the World Cup team during the course of the upcoming winter season. "But everything has to go well for that, it's still a long way to go after such a serious injury", told Stoeckl, who is head coach of the Norwegian team since March 2011.

Can you forget such a crash after about a year, or might such an experience haunt an athlete? 
"No, Thomas took a close look at the fall afterwards and analyzed it. Such crashed often happen due to small mistakes at the landing and Thomas is working on improving his landing technique in order to make it as stable as possible in the future", Alexander Stoeckl concluded.