The Austrian national team is back to Ramsau am Dachstein for their annual treadmill-test. At this point, the test is mainly to determine the general shape of the athletes and to give pointers for the direction of the upcoming periods of training.

At the same time, many of the athletes will make their first summer jumps before the whole team will travel to Schruns, Austria for the first jumping camp of the year on the newly constructed hill facility next week.

Willi Denifl: "I haven't done any jumps as of yet and plan to ease slowly into the jumping preparations. As the other athletes, I have had extended endurance sessions since mid-May and our treadmill test will now show where exactly I stand and how I have to continue to train." Teammate Berni Gruber has already started to jump again: "I feel very well, the first plastic jumps were a lot of fun and everything worked well from the beginning. I am going to keep it like that!"

On the occasion of the treadmill test, the Austrian athletes also gave their first statements on the "home" World Championships which the Austrian venue of Seefeld was awarded for 2019. "I really really liked it when I heard about that and Seefeld 2019 is something that I will attempt to be a part of", Gruber continued.

Teammate Lukas Klapfer couldn't agree more: "I definitely plan to continue until 2019, rather even longer and I was very happy that Seefeld was awarded the World Championships. This is a unique opportunity for me to experience a home World Championship after Ramsau 1999 was too early for me. It is a big goal and I will work towards that."

Source: the official FIS site