The women's ski jumping normal hill will be one of the first medal events of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics to be held in Zhangjiakou on Saturday, and the athletes were fired up after training sessions on Thursday and Friday, although the absence of major contenders cast a cloud over the event.

Among the favorites to medal are Germany's Katharina Althaus, the Slovenian trio of Ursa Bogataj, Ema Klinec and Nika Kriznar, and Sara Takanashi and Yuki Ito of Japan.

But the current World Cup leader, Sara Marita Kramer of Austria, will be missing at the start after testing positive for COVID-19 last weekend, ending her hopes of traveling to China.

Norwegian Maren Lundby, the defending Olympic champion from 2018, meanwhile bowed out of the entire season in October, explaining that natural changes in her body made it impossible for her to compete at the highest level to make it to Beijing.

"I'm very sad about Marita, and Maren too. It's bad luck," Bogataj, who put in two of the best training jumps at the National Ski Jumping Center on Friday, told reporters.

But she was keen to focus on the job at hand: "For tomorrow you have to jump good and be lucky and that's all."

Althaus felt so at ease she only did one out of three possible training jumps on Friday: "I'm feeling very comfortable on this hill. I'm ready," she said.

Speaking of the ski jumping venue, she added: "It's very impressive. It's crazy, but it's so nice to be here."

Her compatriot Pauline Hessler was of the same opinion on Thursday.

"The hill is really really good, very harmonious, it feels great... It's really fun to jump here," she told CGTN.

"It's a cool profile, the hill has been perfectly prepared. It's a hill where you have to jump very courageously," added Eva Pinkelnig of Austria.

One additional challenge for the athletes has been the extremely cold temperatures in Zhangjiakou, sometimes hitting -20 degrees Celsius, especially in the evenings when most of the ski jumping competitions will be held.

"It's so cold! I'm so freezing," Kriznar laughed after training on Thursday. "But this is winter sports and we need to be ready for this."

"Personally, it doesn't bother me too much... it's a little chilly but I'm ok," Hessler added with a chuckle.

For Pinkelnig, it was just something to get used to. "Honestly, I would much rather have -20 degrees Celsius, than 20 degrees Celsius at Winter Olympics!"

There will be five ski jumping events at the Beijing 2022 Winter Games: the women's normal hill on Saturday, the men's normal hill on Sunday, and the mixed team event on Monday, followed by the men's large hill on February 12 and the men's team event on February 14.

(Reporting from Zhangjiakou)