Andreas Wellinger wins normal hill qualification
Aug 31, 2018·Ski Jumping
Andreas Wellinger won the qualification on the normal hill in PyeongChang. On late Thursday evening, Wellinger jumped on 103 m on the HS 109 and scored a total of 133.5 points. Wellinger is now one of the top contenders for Olympic gold in the first Ski Jumping event of the 2018 Olympic Winter Games in Korea. With Kamil Stoch and Dawid Kubacki, two Polish athletes who are also among the favorites, came in behind Wellinger today.
The German team showed an outstanding performance in the first Ski Jumping event of the Games. Besides the winner Wellinger, Richard Freitag came in fourth, Markus Eisenbichler sixth and Karl Geiger seventh. It can't go much better for an entire team.
"It was a nice qualification in nice conditions and it was Ski Jumping on a high level. I could improve my performance in the training rounds here. My jumps got more stable, I was able to adjust some smaller details in order to move in the right direction and that's why I'm looking forward to the competition now", Andreas Wellinger summed up the days in PyeongChang after the qualification.
"It was okay, it wasn't a top jump, but actually I'm very satisfied. I like this hill. Every one of our team improved over the past couple of days", said Markus Eisenbichler.
Kraft with ambitions
Austria's Stefan Kraft had a strong jump and achieved a top result in fifth. After a long dry spell, Kraft is definitely capable of finishing among the very best in the Olympic competition on Saturday. Daniel Andre Tande was the best Norwegian in eighth.
Stefan Hula and Maciej Kot completed the extremely strong result of the Polish team in ninth and eleventh. 24-year-old Russian Evgeniy Klimov did surprisingly well. He came in on a strong 12th place and qualified for the competition, like all his teammates.
Vladimir Zografski of Bulgaria provided a surprise as well. The 17th place is a top result for him.
Seven of the 57 athletes failed to qualify for the Olympic competition. Among them two ski jumpers from Estonia, two of the Czech Republic and Fatih Arda Ipcioglu of Turkey.
The normal hill competition will take place on Saturday at 9:35 pm (1:35 pm CET).
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