Lundby wins final, Seyfarth the Blue Bird Tour
Mar 24, 2019·Ski Jumping
The outstanding athlete of this ladies' Ski Jumping season, Maren Lundby of Norway, took her 25th World Cup win in the final competition of this winter. The 24-year-old, who already claimed the overall World Cup title some time ago, dominated on the large hill in Chaikovsky on Sunday.
With jumps of 128 m and 137.5 m and 270.9 points, the World Champion was unbeatable on the HS 140 hill today. "I am very happy to be back on the podium today. It was a great day, we had a great competition with many longs jumps. It was a long but very successful season. I am happy that I was able to continue after last year’s success and keep my level high, it means a lot to me and my whole team", Lundby said after the competition.
The one who got closest to Maren Lundby was Juliane Seyfarth of Germany. After she could win the last three competitions in a row, her jumps of 128 m and 141 m and a total of 258.0 points earned her the second place today.
The third place went to young Slovene Nika Kriznar with 126 m and 140.5 m (247.1 points). The 19-year-old equaled her career-best World Cup result from Rasnov 2018 and stood on the podium for the first time this season. "This was a perfect way to finish off the season. I have been dreaming about such jumps and a podium for a long time, and today I was able to make it. I really enjoyed flying today. It was a long and tough season with 2 tours in Norway and Russia at the very end but it was just great", said the Slovene.
Jacqueline Seifriedsberger of Austria repeated her fourth place from the normal hill competition on Saturday and provided a very good team result for the Austrians together with Chiara Hoelzl in sixth and Eva Pinkelnig in 11th.
In between Seifriedsberger and Hoelzl, Katharina Althaus was the second-best German in fifth, Carina Vogt came in 12th.
It was a good final day of the season for the Japanese team with Yuki Ito and Sara Takanashi in seventh and eighth.
Despite Maren Lundby's clear win on Sunday, Juliane Seyfarth could defend her lead in the overall ranking of the first Blue Bird Tour. The 29-year-old earned herself an extra prize money of CHF 10 000.- at the end of the season. "It feels great to be the first ever, historic winner of the Blue Bird Russian Tour. The tour was great fun for all of us, and we are all very grateful to the Russian organizers", said Seyfarth.
With a total of 12 wins and 1909 points, Maren Lundby successfully defended the overall World Cup title. Like last winter, Katharina Althaus finished second (1493 points), Juliane Seyfarth took the third place with 1451 points).
Germany clearly won the Nations Cup with 5220 points, followed by Norway (3443 points) and Austria (3192 points).
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