Austria takes first team victory since 2014

The team of Austria, with Michael Hayboeck, Manuel Fettner, Markus Schiffner and Stefan Kraft, won an exciting team competition on the Holmenkollen in Oslo. They scored a total of 999.7 points with their eight jumps and came in close ahead of Germany (987.2 points) and the Polish team (986.7 points). The local heroes of Norway finished fourth, 3.6 points behind Poland.

The top 4 in a team event haven't been that close yet this winter. After eight jumps of every team on the Holmenkollen, the winners and the fourth-placed team were only separated by 16.7 points. A week ago Poland took the win at the WSC in Lahti, this team the Austrians finished on top. Michael Hayboeck, Manuel Fettner, Markus Schiffner and Stefan Kraft secured the first team victory for Austria in almost three years. The last time the team of Heinz Kuttin, who is not in Oslo due to an illness, could celebrate a win was in March 2014.

"This was a sensational competition, it was not looking that good for us yesterday. It was not easy today, the wind was changing fast and often. There was head wind at the take-off and starting at about 100 m there was tail wind. This made it difficult to jump today", said double World Champion Stefan Kraft, who took the lead in the Raw Air Tournament with his two top jumps. "That's good, but we only had 3 of the 16 jumps, it's still a long way to go until Vikersund", Kraft said about this leading position in the overall ranking of the Raw Air.

Second top athlete of the Austrians today was Michael Hayboeck, who was able to show a great performance after he was struggling a bit recently. "It was a relief for me that I was able to show what I'm really capable of in this team competition", said Hayboeck after the 28th win in a World Cup team competition for Austria.

The German team of head coach Werner Schuster can also be satisfied with the second place. Andreas Wellinger, Stephan Leyhe, Richard Freitag and Markus Eisenbichler, were fourth in Lahti and could celebrate a podium finish after a strong performance today. A close team performance was the decisive factor for the success of the German team. "All in all it was a good performance. I'm satisfied with the competition and the result", said Werner Schuster.

The newly crowned team World Champions from Poland finished third in front of many enthusiastic Polish fans in Oslo. Piotr Zyla, Dawid Kubacki, Maciej Kot and Kamil Stoch showed yet another strong performance but came in close behind the top this time. "It was a good competition. We missed the second place, or even the victory by a really tiny margin. That doesn’t change the fact that we are still very satisfied with our result today. We fought until the very end, we did our very best. We did make some minor mistakes, fortunately it was enough for a podium. The atmosphere at the hill was great, it almost felt like home. I would like to thank the Polish fans for making it a very special day for us", Kamil Stoch summed up the competition for his team.

The Norwegian team, that started with high expectations after the second place in Lahti, was not satisfied with the fourth place in this home event. Especially Daniel Andre Tande was struggling with the wind conditions and the jury decision after his first jump. Not even a good final jump could make up for the disappointment in the first round.

Japan, Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Switzerland finished on the places five to eight.

After three of 16 competition jumps, Austria's Stefan Kraft leads the Raw Air overall ranking with 404.3 points, followed by Peter Prevc of Slovenia (395.2 points) and Andreas Wellinger (392.7 points). Piotr Zyla of Poland is fourth with 392.2 points.