1-2 finish for Germany at World Cup premiere in Rasnov

Karl Geiger won the first-ever FIS Men's Ski Jumping World Cup on the HS 97 hill in Rasnov (ROU). On Friday afternoon, Geiger posted two jumps of exactly 100 m and came in ahead of his teammate Stephan Leyhe and Austria's Stefan Kraft in an extremely exciting competition.

"In his current shape, Karl Geiger is unbeatable on the normal hill, he would have to make a mistake that I can defeat him here", explained third-placed Stefan Kraft, who was impressed by Geiger's performance after the competition.

It's true, Karl Geiger seems to be the one to beat on the smaller hills: It was the third normal hill competition this winter, and it was the third win of Karl Geiger. And it was the third competition on the hill in Rasnov (2 x Grand Prix 2018), about 100 km north of Bucarest, and Karl Geiger won all three. The Oberstdorf-native showed two jumps of 100 m today and scored 270.3 points. This earned him the, for a normal hill event, big lead of 5.6 points over Stephan Leyhe and 5.8 points over Stefan Kraft.

"I really like this venue, it's a great place for me to jump and I'm really happy about the result", the winner said today's competition.

The second place of Stephan Leyhe was more of a surprise than Geiger's win. The Willingen-native was not expected to be among the best on a normal hill up to now, but he is in such strong shape that he can even finish on top in normal hill events. "Events on a normal hill are always good for the German team and it was a quite good competition for us today", Leyhe said.
Besides Geiger and Leyhe, Pius Paschke came in 10th, Markus Eisenbichler 11th and Constantin Schmid 15th - An outstanding result for the German team.

Stefan Kraft was satisfied with his third place this afternoon: "I'm really happy about the third place. Karl and Stephan were jumping really strong today and they were better than me, but I'm also satisfied with my performance. Of course, it's more fun to jump on Ski Flying hills, but this is a great hill as well." This was already the 12th podium for the Austrian this season.

Peter Prevc narrowly missed the podium in fourth, his teammate Ziga Jelar finished on a strong 12th place. Marius Lindvik was the best Norwegian in fifth, Johann Forfang and Daniel Andre Tande came in 14th and 18th.

Polish jumpers not on top
No Polish athlete finished on top today, but with the places six (Kamil Stoch), eight (Dawid Kubacki) and nine (Piotr Zyla) the team could still achieve a good result.

Re-start due to heavy snowfall
At the beginning of the second round, heavy snowfall caused the inrun-track to get slower and so the final round was re-started. The first five competitors in the final had no chance to jump far due to the low inrun speed and so the round was started again after a 10-minute break. Aleksander Zniszczol, Antti Aalto, Gregor Deschwanden, Dominik Peter and Roman Koudelka could jump again. This re-start didn't have any effect on the top ranks today.

Freund misses the final round
Severin Freund came in 32nd and closely missed the final of the Top 30: "When you narrowly miss the final it's, of course, annoying. I would have wanted to jump again. This was what I had hoped for and it would have been really cool. But nevertheless, the jump in the competition was a good one and it's simply a long way to go. There's still a lot of room for improvement, but there's another chance tomorrow", Freund said after the competition.

Geiger closes gap in the overall World Cup
In the overall World Cup, Karl Geiger (1235 points) could make up some ground compared to the leader Stefan Kraft (1333 points). Japan's Ryoyu Kobayashi, who is not competing in Rasnov, is third.

Full results