SKI JUMPING. The long wait is finally over: the new World Cup season officially kicked off with the men’s qualification round on Lillehammer’s normal hill for Saturday’s individual competition. The weather was not particularly in favor of the athletes in the past couple days, and also today the qualification had to be delayed by 15 minutes due to too strong wind.  The weather unfortunately played a major part throughout the entire event: the qualification suffered multiple interruptions due to the ever changing wind conditions.

The 2012/13 season has officially started! Lukas Hlava won this winter's first qualification in Lillehammer! Photo: FISskijumping.om

The first qualification victory of the new season went to Lukas Hlava from the Czech Republic with a jump of 98 m and 133.3 points. The Czech athlete, who had a strong summer, once again proved that he is capable of top results any time.

The shooting star of the summer, Reruhi Shimizu of Japan finished second with a sensational jump of 101.5 m, which was also the only jump above the 100m line in qualification. The Japanese athlete collected a total of 132.9 points. The performance of teammate Taku Takeuchi is also an excellent example of the positive trend within the Japanese team these days: the 25-year-old, who was on the podium in the World Cup for the first time last winter and celebrated his first win in the Grand Prix 2012, came in third with a jump on 98 m and 130.8 points.

Norwegians well prepared

The Norwegians are definitely well prepared for the home events. With Andreas Stjernen (4th), Tom Hilde (6th), Fredrik Bjerkeengen (8th), Rune Velta (11th), Anders Jacobsen (12th) and Anders Fannemel (13th), coach Alexander Stöckl has now 6 athletes among the best 12. A total of 9 Norwegian athletes qualified for tomorrow’s individual competition.

Krzysztof Mietus of Poland finished 5th, Bulgaria’s Vladimir Zografski came in 7th, while the last two spots in the top 10 were captured by Wolfgang Loitzl and Sami Niemi.  Loitzl, who finished second overall in the summer Continental Cup series, has shown another strong performance and can look forward to the competition from rank 9. Sami Niemi’s top ten result is definitely a great start to the season for the Finnish team.

Many athletes really had a difficult time with the wind conditions.  Alexey Romashov of Russia had the worst luck of all: after having problems already during the flight, he was not able to hold his jump and fell. Luckily, he left the outrun without help but failed to qualify for the individual competition.

Bardal and Stoch strong

Of the pre-qualified group, Anders Bardal (95 m) and Kamil Stoch (94 m) are in excellent shape. Thomas Morgenstern (89.5 m) was not convincing enough. He did not jump bad, but certainly has room for improvement. Roman Koudelka (85 m) and Robert Kranjec (91.5 m) also showed good jumps. Simon Ammann, Severin Freund, Richard Freitag, Andreas Kofler and Gregor Schlierenzauer did not take part in the qualification round.

FISskijumping.com
23.11.2012 13:39