SKI JUMPING. Kamil Stoch demonstrated his strength in Zakopane and celebrated a very emotional home victory. The Pole jumped under sometimes heavy snowfall and changing winds into the hearts of the fans with awesome 135 m in the final and celebrated his fourth World Cup victory with 257.9 points. It was the second time he could win at home in Zakopane.

After the first round Stoch was second behind Severin Freund, who didn't have a very good jump or good conditions in the final and finished tenth. But for the Germans it was still a good competition because Richard Freitag confirmed his good performances in training and reached the podium for the third time in his career with 251.2 points.

Freitag: "Sevi had no chance - attacking again tomorrow"

"I'm happy, my second jump was pretty good, even if it was not far enough. It hurts when you see that Sevi had no chance in the final. We will attack again tomorrow", Freitag said after the second-best result of his career.

The example of Andreas Kofler showed today how close good and bad luck can be in ski jumping. In the first round he had tailwind and no chance for a very long jump under heavy snowfall and was 14th. In the final he jumped on 130 m and moved up to third with a total of 238.7 points. Kofler is amazing.

Slovenes with great team performance

The Slovenes achieved an absolutely great team result: Peter Prevc missed his first podium result by only 2.7 points and finished fourth, followed by his teammate Robert Kranjec. Jurij Tepes as eighth and Jernej Damjan as eleventh completed the top result of the team of head coach Goran Janus.

Finally the Finns did well

Also Finland finally had a reason to celebrate: Janne Happonen landed on a very good seventh place, Anssi Koivuranta came in 13th under the eyes of coach Ari-Pekka Nikkola. In front of over 10 000 enthusiastic fans, Roman Koudelka (6th) and Lukas Hlava (12th) achieved top results for the Czech team.

The best in the overall World Cup didn't have much luck in the first round. When the top athletes were about to jump the snowfall got stronger and the inrun speed decreased for Thomas Morgenstern, Gregor Schlierenzauer, Kofler and also Anders Bardal.

Morgenstern fell

Morgenstern tried to fly as long as possible, but then he was not well prepared for the landing and fell. The athlete from Carinthia didn't suffer any injuries. "It was difficult to see where I had to land. Then everything went fast and I was lying in the snow. My fingers are a bit cold, but apart from that nothing happened", he said afterwards. Schlierenzauer ws 12th after the first round, in the final he didn't jump well and also didn't have good conditions and finished only 18th.

Bardal had no chance in the first round, couldn't qualify for the final and could therefore also not score points in the fight for the overall World Cup against the Austrians. Also Russian Denis Kornilov, Germany's Michael Neumayer and Austrian Martin Koch failed to make the cut. The Norwegian team had a bad day today. Their best was Rune Velta as 14th.

Zniszczol with career-best

17-year-old Aleksander Zniszczol of the young Polish team had the best competition of his career and was ninth. Well-known athletes like Simon Ammann (15th) and Wolfgang Loitzl (19th) were behind him.

In the overall World Cup ranking Kofler extended his lead again. The World Cup party in Zakopane will continue on Saturday at 4:30 pm CET.

FISskijumping.com
20.01.2012 19:18