SKI JUMPING. Andreas Wank surprisingly won the qualification for Sunday's individual competition in Hinterzarten. After his two victories in the Continental Cup in Courchevel, Wank proved in the sometimes pouring rain that he can keep up with the world's best. He jumped very well in training and showed a 100 m jump in the qualification that earned him a total of 117.9 points.

Andreas Wank (GER), photo © fisskijumping.com

It was his first appearance in the FIS GP this summer and that's why he had to jump already with the start number four and watched almost the whole qualification round from the Leader's Box. A nice start for the German. "I never won a qualification before. I still make some mistakes but the jumps are still far. This is a good thing. Now I have to work on correcting the mistakes."

Fettner and Hayboeck strong - Hlava too

Austrian Manuel Fettner finished second (115.1 points), Lukas Hlava from the Czech Republic, who already showed convincing performances this summer was third (113.9 points). With Michael Hayboeck another Austrian came in fourth, Johan Remen Evensen was the best Norwegian as fifth, Jure Sinkoved the best Slovene (6th), followed by Fumihisa Yumoto from Japan.

Thomas Morgenstern will compete in Hinterzarten, but after good training jumps he skipped the qualification. The Austrian won all three competition of the FIS GP this summer and clearly leads in the overall ranking. The Austrians travelled to Hinterzarten without Wolfgang Loitzl, Gregor Schlierenzauer and Martin Koch.

Of the other pre-qualified athletes, especially Richard Freitag raised high expectations. He showed the longest jump of the day with 105 m in the training and also in the qualification he was one of the best with 100.5 m. Freitag is one of the candidates for the victory on Sunday. Also Kamil Stoch from Poland and Robert Kranjec from Slovenia were among the top athletes.

All Americans out

The whole American team failed to make the cut for the competition. All four jumpers from the USA were among the eleven athletes who could not qualify. Surprisingly also World Champion Andreas Kofler from Austria could not qualify for the Top 50.

FISskijumping.com
05.08.2011 18:08

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