SKI JUMPING. Andreas Wank repeated his success from Hinterzarten and also won the qualification in Courchevel. On the "Tremplin Le Praz" in the French-Italian border region the German won with a great jump on 120.5 m and 116.0 points.

The German team showed a good performance in general. Also without Severin Freund, Martin Schmitt and Michael Neumayer, who traditionally takes a break in summer, the Germans have more irons in the fire. Besides WAnk also Richard Freitag is in a great shape - he was the best in one training round. Only Pascal Bodmer is having problems, he could not qualify for the competition.

Keituri the highlight for the Finnish team

The Finnish team travelled to France with six athletes. Their goal is to finally score more FIS GP points than the five points of Jarkko Maeaettae. Matti Hautamaeki made his first appearance in an international competition this summer. Also Anssi Koivuranta is in Courchevel. Both easily qualified but the best athlete of head coach Pekka Niemelae was Kalle Keituri who was second with 119.5 m and raised hopes for a top result on Friday (start of the competition at 6:15 pm CET live on FISskijumping.com). The other three Finnish jumpers failed to make the cut.

Ilja Rosliakov from Russia was third, followed by his teammate Denis Kornilov - a very good result for the Russians, who are showing convincing performances this summer. Jurij Tepes from Slovenia surprised as fifth, ahead of Jan Matura from the Czech Republic and another German: Stephan Hocke. The Czech team is in Courchevel without Lukas Hlava who is taking a competition break. Junshiro Kobayashi was the best Japanese as eighth. The overall winner of the GP 2010, Daiki Ito, is still not competing this season, just like Swiss Simon Ammann.

Pre-qualified athletes strong - French not bad

The French are taking their home event seriously and competed with six athletes. Only two of them could not qualify for the competition, Nicolas Mayer and Emmanuel Chedal even finished in the Top 20 and were stronger than expected. That gives cause for hope that a good result in the competition might be possible.

The pre-qualified athletes then showed why they achieved top results this summer. Also in the qualification in Courchevel, where Ito won ahead of Morgenstern last year, they showed top jumps. Bulgarian Vladimir Zografski, fifth in 2010, jumped on 128 m. Taku Takeuchi from Japan jumped half a meter longer. Robert Kranjec from Slovenia landed on 126 m. Morgenstern jumped 125 m after he was the best in one of the two training rounds. He sure has some room for improvement when he fights for his fifth victory in a row on Friday.

The Austrians are in France without their stars Gregor Schlierenzauer, Andreas Kofler, Wolfgang Loitzl and Martin Koch, but with Morgestern they have this summer's highflyer on their team. He's the one to beat. The chase is on.

FISskijumping.com
11.08.2011 19:35