GP winner Klimov wins qualification at season opener
Nov 16, 2018·Ski Jumping
With 137 m and 137.7 points, Evgeniy Klimov won the qualification at the Ski Jumping season opener in Wisla ahead of Dawid Kubacki (136.3 points) and Stephan Leyhe (135.2 points). The 24-year-old Russian showed convincing jumps on the first day of the new season and could follow up on his strong performances in summer. Klimov claimed the overall title of the Grand Prix 2018.
Klimov was also the first athlete to receive the prize money of CHF 3000,-, that every qualification winner will get from now on. The almost 5000 fans at the HS 134 Adam-Malysz-hill in Wisla saw this season's first qualification taking place in perfect weather conditions. To the joy of the fans, local hero Dawid Kubacki came in close behind Klimov and was the best Pole in second.
With Stephan Leyhe and Karl Geiger in third and fourth, it was a strong start of the season for the German team. Pius Paschke in tenth, David Siegel in 12th and Richard Freitag in 17th provided a very good team result. Markus Eisenbichler, Richard Freitag, Stephan Leyhe and Karl Geiger will represent Germany in Saturday's team competition.
Best Austrian was once again Daniel Huber, who had already proved his skills during the course of the summer and finished sixth in today's qualification in Wisla.
With Antti Aalto, a Finnish ski jumper could surprisingly achieve a Top 10 result. It was an equally good day for the Japanese team: Ryoyu Kobayashi and is brother Junshiro, who won in Wisla last year, came in fifth and eighth. Daiki Ito was 16th and Taku Takeuchi 24th. The team of head coach Hideharu Miyahira is definitely making progress. On the other hand it didn't go well at all for veteran Noriaki Kasai. The crowd favorite was only 64 and failed to make the cut for the competition.
Best of the Norwegians was Johann Andre Forfang in 14th.
It was surprisingly close for Kamil Stoch today, who starts the season as one of the big favorites. With 111 m he was only 48th and could barely qualify for Sunday's individual competition.
The team competition in Wisla will take place on Saturday at 4 pm CET, the first individual event of the season follows on Sunday at 3 pm CET.
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