Ammann leaps into history with fourth gold medal

Harry Potter himself would have his work cut out to match the achievements of Simon Ammann who launched himself to yet another gold medal on Saturday to add to that of the previous Saturday and the brace he won in Salt Lake City eight years ago.

Indeed the 28-year-old Swiss, who received the Potter sobriquet for his feats in 2002, admitted that there was an element of wizardry involved. "I'm speechless," he said. "It was a nerve-wracking experience. I had this magic force to jump far. This is truly great."

Ammann’s jumps of 144 metres and 138m bagged a total of 283.6 points to comprehensively beat Poland’s Adam Malysz (269.4pts) and Gregor Schlierenzauer of Austria (262.2pts).

His fourth gold medal had journalists thumbing through their sports almanacs to discover that Ammann is now the most successful Swiss Olympian in history.

“It’s hard to know how to act,” he told the Tribune de Genève newspaper. “There are so many legends who are no longer here, who could have told me what to do, and how to conduct myself.”

Amman also becomes the most successful individual ski jumper ever, having bettered Matti “the Birdman” Nykanen.

The Fin also took four gold medals (1984 and 1988), but one of those arrived courtesy of a team event.

Furthermore, few (if any) Olympians have repeated a double gold medal haul with a dry Games in between.

Meanwhile Austrian pre-event complaints about Ammann's ski bindings, which they claimed gave the Swiss an aerodynamic advantage and hadn’t been approved by the International Ski Federation, (FIS) came to nothing after the body gave the attachments the all-clear.

The protest went down badly with the Swiss team, where officials feel that an element of sour grapes was at work as the Austrians struggle to reach the winter Olympic heights of previous Games.

It’s clear that, at the moment, Ammann has the appetite to continue and said to the Tribune de Genève that he is “leaving the door open” for the 2016 in Sochi.

By then he will be 32, the same age as Malysz is now, and so perhaps the last chapter of the Harry Potter ski jumping saga will be written in Russian.

On Sunday, the Swiss team were spraying Champagne again, after Michael Schmid, 25, won the gold medal in the ski cross event, where four competitors, race simultaneously over a course of jumps and turns.

Schmid’s (96 kilos) practice of muscling to the front before the first corner paid off and he finished in front of Andreas Matt of Austria and Norwegian Audun Groenfeld.

In Sunday’s super combined alpine ski event for men, Switzerland’s Silvan Zurbriggen was third.

The slalom specialist was unexpectedly in sixth place after the downhill run and tenth on his preferred discipline to take the bronze behind American Bode Miller (1^st) and Ivica Kostelic (2^nd).

Carlo Janka was fourth. Much has been expected from the “Iceman” who has so far failed to do his all-round talents justice but could still figure in tomorrow’s giant slalom event.

With five gold medals and two bronze medals, Switzerland are fourth on the medal table.