SKI JUMPING WORLD CUP. The winning streak of Andreas Kofler continues. On the large hill in Lillehammer, Kofler also won the third individual competition of the season and celebrated his eighth victory in the World Cup.

Young Slovene Jurij Tepes was in the lead after the first round for the first time in his career. Andrea Morassi from Italy was second. But both could not repeat these performances in the final and finished eighth (Morassi) and ninth (Tepes). Morassi is known to be a very good ski flyer and was on the podium already once, in Oberstdorf five years ago. Back then he was 18 years old.

Freund nerves of steel

Everything is just going great for Kofler right now, the Austrian flies on cloud nine and moved up from fifth to first in the final with a total of 252 points. He remains the only winner this season. "It's just working for me right now. That's great, what more can I say? I never won three times in a row before", said Kofler, who also praised the Germans. "They are doing a good job"

Severin Freund proved that he has nerves of steel. Because of a broken ski he could not jump in the first round, but the jury allowed him to start after World Cup leader Kofler. After some time of waiting he jumped and was third. In the final he could even improve this position and came in second (249.2 points). He achieved the second podium result for the German team this weekend after Richard Freitag was second yesterday.

"It was pretty hectic", Freund told in his usual calm manner. "My ski broke because the perimeter board came up. Of course that never happened to me before and it will probably never happen again", said Freund. "Maybe such a hectic preparation is better than to worry too much about everything."

Anders Bardal shared the second place with Freund and achieved the first podium result for Norway this season. The 29-year-old showed what he's capable of with a great 140.5 m jump in the final.

Best World Cup result for Zyla

The best three were followed by more top jumpers of the season: Gregor Schlierenzauer finished fourth, ahead of Freitag and Thomas Morgenstern. Piotr Zyla achieved a career-best as seventh and was by far the best Pole. Also Andreas Wank will be happy about his tenth place.

Ammann shows improvement

With his best jump of the weekend, Simon Ammann showed in the final that he is on the right way. The Swiss moved up from 25th to 13. Close behind the best Slovene Robert kranjec and the best of the Czech team, Roman Koudelka. Daiki Ito from Japan seems to get in a better shape, he finished 14th.

The third athelte of the French team of the new head coach Matjaz Zupan could score World Cup points today. After Nicolas Mayer and Vincent Descombes Sevoie in the previous events, Emmanuel Chedal scored points as 24th this time. So the season was okay for the team so far.

Evensen not in good shape

There were no big surprises in the qualification earlier today. Only ski flying world record holder Johan Remen Evensen is not in a good shape and failed to make the cut. Dimitri Vassiliev is not consistent enough yet and could also not qualify.

Disappointing performance of Polish team

Kamil Stoch was only 48th in Sunday's competition and could not qualify for the final round. There the team of Lukasz Kruczek was only represented by Piotr Zyla.

In the overall World Cup ranking Kofler keeps on extending his lead. He now has the maximum of 300 points before the nest three World Cup competition in Harrachov next weekend.

FISskijumping.com
04.12.2011 16:10

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