OPA: Lev and Bortolas win in Seefeld
Dec 22, 2020·Nordic Combined
Austria’s Samuel Lev and Italian Iacopo Bortolas were the two winners of the men’s OPA Alpencup events in Seefeld this weekend.
Slovenian Uros Vbek was the man flying ahead of the pack on the jumping hill on both days and captured the pole position with a jump of 107.5 metres on Saturday and the same distance on Sunday. On Saturday, 145.8 points brought him a more comfortable lead of 23 seconds on Czech Republic’s Jiri Konvalinka. Samuel Lev started his race from position three and with a delay of 32 seconds.
Samuel Lev was not the fastest man on the track and skied only the 30th best time but it was enough to overtake Vrbek and Konvalinka. In the end, however, he almost lost his victory, as fastest skier Lenard Kersting from Germany stormed to the front from position 25.
At the finish line, only 1.9 seconds divided the two athletes and Lev celebrated his second Alpencup victory. Behind Kersting, his teammate Simon Mach had advanced from the tenth position to take third, +17.1 seconds after winner Lev and 0.5 seconds ahead of Czech Republic’s Petr Sablatura. 11 athletes finished in the following 15 seconds when a big pursuing group reached the finish.
Final Results
Ski Jumping results
Iacopo Bortolas had a great jump of 104.5 metres on the hill on Sunday and set himself up promisingly for his first-ever Alpencup win with rank two and a disadvantage of only 5 seconds at the start. But the previous day’s winner Lev was hot on his heels and started only four seconds after Bortolas with a jump on 104.5 metres as well.
Also Bortolas was not the fastest skier on the track by far but was able to distance Lev by 5.7 seconds at finish line. Petr Sablatura from the Czech Republic was fighting for the third place again but Austria’s Florian Kolb had exactly the same amount of points (130.1) after the ski jumping round and beat Sablatura by two seconds in the end, so that the Czech had to be satisfied with the fourth place again.
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