Kamil Stoch soars to 4-Hills Grand Slam

Kamil Stoch did it! The Pole also won the fourth competition of the 66th 4-Hills-Tournament on Saturday evening in Bischofshofen (AUT) and is now the second ski jumper after Sven Hannawald to win the "Grand Slam". The German achieved this in 2001/02.

Kamil Stoch showed yet another outstanding performance and took his fourth win in a row with jumps of 132.5 m and 137 m on the Paul-Ausserleitner-hill and a total of 275.6 points. Immediately after this big triumph, the 30-year-old was obviously relieved: "There was big pressure during this tournament but the most important thing is to stay focused on your job and do what you can do, you can't do more than that. I just wanted to do my best jumps and that's all. trust me, I didn't focus on the grand slam. from the begging of the tournament, I just wanted to do it right. This is huge for me and for the entire team."

Sven Hannawald, who was, until today, the only jumper to take all four wins during one 4-Hills-Tournament, congratulated Kamil Stoch right after his final jump in the outrun. "This is a moment you can't describe. I think that Kamil doesn't really know what happens now. The way he did it is incredible. A sensational performance! With each good jump, Kamil proves that he belongs to that club. Now there are two of us", said the German.

The second place in this high-level competition in Bischofshofen went to Norway's Anders Fannemel, who scored 272.4 points with his jumps of 130 m and 139 m. With this performance in the final event of the former Ski Flying world record holder moved up to third in the overall ranking of the 4-Hills-Tournament.

Andreas Wellinger of Germany was only sixth after the first round with 129 m, but with the best jump in the final on 139.5 m and 270.5 points the Bavarian clinched the third place on the podium, and at the same time, the second place in the 4-Hills-Tournament overall. A success that came as a bit of a surprise for him: "It is totally amazing that I can finish on the podium of the 4-Hills-Tournament. I had a mediocre start and then I could really improve my performance and finish third twice. I would have never expected that I would be able to achieve such a good result in the overall ranking."

Stefan Kraft closely missed the podium today. The local hero showed a strong performance on his home hill and finished fourth, less than two points behind Andreas Wellinger: "It seems as if I just shouldn't be on the podium in the Tournament, now I was fourth twice. It would have been nice for the entire team, but we have to wait a little longer now", said the Austrian.

Robert Johansson of Norway had the longest jump of the day with 140 m in the final round and finished fifth, followed by his teammate Andreas Stjernen in sixth. With three jumpers in the Top 6, the team of head coach Alexander Stoeckl achieved a great team result this evening. Daniel Andre Tande and Johann Andre Forfang were 12th and 13th and also not far behind, even if both probably expected even more.

Behind Junshiro Kobayashi of Japan (7th) and Slovenia's Peter Prevc (8th), Dawid Kubacki came in ninth. The Pole was en route to the podium in second after the first round, but in the final round he was not able to defend this position. After his coach Stefan Horngacher decided to move the gate down for him, Kubacki jumped only on 127.5 m and lost some ground.

Kamil Stoch won the 66th 4-Hills-Tournament with 1108.8 points, clearly ahead of Andreas Wellinger (1039.2 points) and Anders Fannemel (1021.3 points).

The Pole now also took the lead in the overall World Cup with 723 points. The two Germans Richard Freitag (711 points) and Andreas Wellinger (569 points) follow in second and third.

After a short break, the ski jumpers move on to one of the really big hills next weekend. On January 13th and 14th, two competitions will be held on the Ski Flying hill in Bad Mitterndorf (AUT).