SKI JUMPING. Thomas Morgenstern has not lost any of his strength from the past winter and won the opening competition of this summer's FIS GP. The World Champion from Oslo moved up from eighth after the first round to the top at the Adam-Malysz-Hill in Wisla. With jumps of 119.5 m and 129 m Morgenstern reached a total of 236.7 points.

Thomas Morgenstern

But it was a really close decision: Russian Pavel Karelin, who surprisingly was in the lead after the first round, kept his nerves in the final and showed a great jump on 129.5 m. With 235.3 points, the athlete of the new Russian coach Richard Schallert finished second only 1.4 points behind the winner, who could already win the overall ranking of the FIS GP in 2003 and 2007.

Thomas Morgenstern

Freund missed podium by only 0.2 points

The second Austrian ski jumping superstar, Gregor Schlierenzauer, was third with 231.4 points. The Austrians are also a superpower in summer 2011. A superpower is what Germany wants to become again and with Severin Freund they have one iron in the fire. He came in fourth in the home town of Adam Malysz and missed the podium by only 0.2 points. Also in the Top 10: Richard Freitag. The young Germans were among the best in the Beskides in southern Poland.

Under the new head coach Alex Stoeckl, the best Norwegian was Tom Hilde as fifth, followed by the best Japanese Taku Takeuchi. The winner of the Summer Grand Prix 2010 Daiki Ito did not compete for Japan today but with Fumihisa Yumoto they had another one of their athletes in the Top 10 and will be satisfied when they leave Wisla for Szczyrk.

Kranjec good seventh - Hlave 14th

Robert Kranjec achieved a good result for Slovenia as seventh, but they are not as dominant as in the Continental Cup. Kranjec was second after the first round, but with a jump on 122.5 m in the final he lost some places.

Robert Kranjec

Seven Polish jumpers were in the final, but the athletes of head coach Lukasz Kruczek could not do as well as last year in Wisla when they had five athletes in the Top 10. But they still achieved a good team result in the first summer after the retirement of Adam Malysz. Kamil Stoch was the best of his team as ninth, Maciej Kot was 12th.

The winner of the qualification, Lukas Hlava, was 14th for the Czech Republic, Ondreij Vaculik was 21st, Martin Cikl and Jakub Janda shared the 25th place. Besides the two youngsters, also Stephan Hocke (20th) and Martin Schmitt (28th) could score points for Germany. The Austrians Martin Koch (16th) and Wolfgang Loitzl (19th) still have some room for improvement. Michael Hayboeck was better then them and attracted some attention as 11th.

Many famous names not in the final

Well known jumpers like Noriaki Kasai, Bjoern Einar Romoeren and Anssi Koivuranta could not make the cut for the final round.

Bjoern Einar Romoeren

Also Maximilian Mechler and Pascal Bodmer from Germany could not qualify for the second round, just like the Bulgarian talent Vladimir Zografski. But it's still very early in the season so these athletes will not worry too much about their current level of performance. The summer season started three weeks earlier than in the past years.

FISskijumping.com
17.07.2011 17:43

Pavel Karelin, Thomas Morgenstern and Gregor Schlierenzauer

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