May also be used if you're substituting for the way more skilled person, but the connotation is in any case "I'm perfectly competent at this, dare I say I'm even good at this, but if I'm going on right after this guy, I'm gonna look like crap in comparison."
The phrase is in reference to Bjørn Wirkola, a former ski jumper (struggling with Parkinson's dementia at present) who was considered the world's best ski jumper in the second half of the 1960s. Yeah, of course it's a skiing thing, what else would it be!
"Jumping after Wirkola" is still a perfectly normal phrase to use today — I can find tons of attestations in news stories from the past year, used by a librarian, the head of a municipal department, a store manager, and a police officer, used in reference to themselves — but the fact that "jumping after Wirkola" is a boomer sports reference probably has something to do with why I hadn't heard the phrase until recently.
If that surname "Wirkola" seems familiar, you may be thinking of Bjørn's second cousin once removed, Tommy Wirkola, a Norwegian Sámi filmmaker who directed such films as Kill Buljo, Dead Snow, Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, Violent Night, and Spermageddon. Bjørn Wirkola is apparently not Sámi like Tommy, but rather has "Kven roots". The surname "Wirkola" comes from Finnish "Virkkula".
It's fun when phrases persist that rely on cultural references that may bear no relevance to the people using them. In 20 years will people continue to say that? Will they when knowledge of this particular ski jumper is for true ski jump fans only? A sort of fossil word but it's a person...
Is there an equivalent in English? I'm a native English speaker but I can't think of anything.
Ninja edit. I just remembered "a tough act to follow". I guess that's the closest set expression.
Good thing you explained it, because I thought it meant something like "that very skillful person made it look easy, I'll do that too!"
