SKI JUMPING. Germany's Severin Freund captured the Yellow Bib again with a convincing competition in Kuusamo, Finland. In an exciting event Freund benefited from a bad jump of Slovenian Jaka Hvala, who was in the lead after the first round, but landed already after 97 m in the final.

Under again frosty temperatures of about -15°C, 24-year-old Freund jumped on 134.5 m and 135.5 m and reached a total of 266.1 points. "It's a great feeling to be back in the Yellow Bib that soon. My first jump today was really good. Sapporo and Kuusamo are two very special places, it can go well there, but you can also always have bad luck. Today it was simply great", Freund said after the third individual competition of the season.

Dimitri Vassiliev of Russia, the 32-year-old veteran who achieved his last podium result in Planica 2009, had a strong competition, after he already proved his good shape in yesterday's team competition on the Rukatunturi-hill. Today he landed at 136 m and 132 m, scored a total of 265.4 points and came in second.

Swiss Simon Ammann is on the best way back to previous strength. The 31-year-old of the ski club in Toggenburg, jumped on 135 m and 130.5 m and finished on a very good third place with 255.7 points. "I could gain self-confidence here in Kuusamo. I had to fight for this third place and I'm satisfied, because I could prove to myself that I can do well also under difficult conditions."

Gregor Schlierenzauer, third after the first round and with a good chance on a podium result, posted a jump on 128.5 m in the final and came in fourth, only 1.6 points behind Ammann. With Andreas Kofler (8th) and Wolfgang Loitzl (9th), two of his teammates also finished among the best ten. Manuel Fettner closely missed the Top 10 as 11th. Again another very good team performance of the athletes of head coach Alexander Pointner.

Once again German youngster Andreas Wellinger showed convincing performance. One more time the 17-year-old presented himself in a great shape and was fifth, just like in the normal  hill event in Lillehammer. Also good news for the German team: Summer Grand Prix winner Andreas Wank was 16th and scored World Cup points for the first time this winter.

Best Japanese on Saturday was Taku Takeuchi as sixth, followed by his teammate Noriaki Kasai, who once again proved that top performances can also be shown at age 40. The Norwegians will probably not be that satisfied with this competition. Their best was Anders Bardal as tenth.

Jaka Hvala, who attracted some attention with great jumps in Friday's team competition, was in the lead after the first round with the longest jump of the day on 141 m. But he could not repeat this performances in the final round. With only 97 m the 19-year-old finished 24th.

No points for Morgenstern

Well known names were already out after the first round. Thomas Morgenstern jumped only on 111.5 m (89.4 points) and lost the Yellow Leader's Bib early. "I don't know what happened in my jump, it felt like something was pushing me down", Morgenstern said after his jump. Norwegian Anders Fannemel shared a similar fate. With a jump on 102 m he could also not qualify for the final round.

The Polish team of head coach Lukasz Kruczek had another bad day. After Kamil Stoch could not even qualify for this competition, Dawid Kubacki was the lone Polish jumper in the final round of the best 30.

FISskijumping.com
 01.12.2012 15:04