SKI JUMPING WORLD CUP. The Austrian dominated its strength again and won the first competition of the new season. They were clearly the best in the team competition, that was decided after one round only due to the delays in Kuusamo. Wolfgang Loitzl, Andreas Kofler, Gregor Schlierenzauer and Thomas Morgenstern (517.2 points) won more than 100 points ahead of Japan (408.4 points).

Junshiro Kobayashi, Shohei Tochimoto, Taku Takeuchi and Daiki Ito didn't have outstanding but consist good jumps and that was enough for the second place on Sunday morning.

Russians surprisingly on the podium

The third place on the podium surprisingly went to Russia (398.3 points), their best was Denis Kornilov. The 25-year-old, who already had good jumps in summer, jumped on 143 m and had the longest jump of the competition. This podium result is a perfect start of the season for the Russians, after they had to handle the difficult situation after the tragic death of shootingstar Pavel Karelin.

In his first appearance in Kuusamo, Richard Freitag had to pay his dues. The German landed already after 102.5 m. The German team came to Kuusamo without Martin Schmitt, a regular on the team since 1997. He is still struggeling with knee problems and stayed in Germany. Severin Freund was the final jumper for his team and had the chance to bring them on the podium. But he had some problems during the flight and so the team of Werner Schuster finished fourth.

The fifth place went to Slovenia, their best was Robert Kranjec. A better result would have been possible for the Czech team, but Jakub Janda fell at the landing of his 138.5 m jump. Roman Koudelka is in a fantastic shape! The 22-year-old was already on the podium in the last two competition this summer in Hinzenbach and Klingenthal and he showed his class also at the Rukatunturi. 142 m. With this performance he is a candidate for the podium in the individual competition. The team of head coach David Jiroutek came in sixth.

Bad start for Finland

The teams from Poland and Norway didn't have a very good start of the winter. The finished only seventh and eighth. The competition went even worse for the Finns in front of their home crowd. Matti Hautamaeki's jump was okay, but the team came in only ninth.

FISskijumping.com
27.11.2011 11:04

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