PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — There are hundreds of athletes at the Winter Olympics who can soar and flip and twist in the air in a manner that appears to defy gravity.
No one, however, can fly the way Stefan Kraft can.
Kraft, a 24-year-old Austrian, may not win a medal here this week. He finished 13th in the normal hill competition last weekend. In the large hill qualifications on Friday, he finished in 11th place. The final is Saturday.
Generally, the larger the hill, the better Kraft is. He holds the world record in ski flying, an offshoot of ski jumping, where the hills are larger than those used in the Olympics and where the landing zone is set more than 200 meters away from the takeoff point.