Slovenia takes team gold at Junior Worlds

On Friday the athletes at the FIS Junior World Championships in Park City (USA) were fighting for the titles in two team competitions.

The teams of Slovenia and Germany had an exciting fight for gold in the men's event. At the end Slovenia, with Ziga Jelar, Tilen Bartol, Aljaz Osterc and Bor Pavlovcic came in first with their total of 932.3 points. Tilen Bartol, who would have been one of the very best in an individual ranking with 92.5 m and 91.5 m and 243.6 points, showed the best performance of the four winning jumpers.

The athletes of the German Ski Association, Martin Hamann, Tim Fuchs, Felix Hoffmann and Constantin Schmid, were the best in the final round, but they could not get ahead of Slovenia and won silver with 929.0 points. Constantin Schmid, bronze medalist in Wednesday's individual competition, was once again the best German.

Behind the two top teams, Austria and Japan were fighting for the third place on the podium. The Austrians (Markus Rupitsch, Mika Schwann, Clemens Leitner, Janni Reisenauer) were just a little better at the end with 870.8 points. Masamitsu Ito, Riki Kurita, Ren Nikaido and Yuken Iwasa missed the medal by the tiny margin of only 0.6 points. Yuken Iwasa had the longest jump of the day with 97.5 m in the first round.

Best athlete in the competition was again the newly crowned Junior World Champion Viktor Polasek with 93.5 m and 96 m (253.9 points). His Czech team finished seventh, behind Poland (5th) and Finland (6th). Switzerland also made it to the final round and came in eighth.

For the teams of Russia, Romania, the USA and Norway the competition was already over after the first round. The Norwegians only had three jumpers in the result list, Jesper Oedeagaard was disqualified because his suit did not meet the rules.