Dawid Kubacki wins in Hinzenbach

Dawid Kubacki was the outstanding athlete in this summer's second-to-last FIS Grand Prix in Hinzenbach (AUT). In an exciting competition on Sunday, the reigning normal hill World Champion came in ahead of Austria's Philipp Aschenwald and Piotr Zyla of Poland. In the overall ranking of the Grand Prix, Kubacki is now only ten points behind the leader Yukiya Sato of Japan. This means there will be a real showdown in Klingenthal (GER) next weekend.

For Kubacki, this was already his eighth win in the FIS Grand Prix, the first since October 2017 in Klingenthal. "Of course I'm very happy about today's win. The first jump today was good, but I still had some problems. The second jump was so-so, it was enough to win and I'm very satisfied, but I still have a lot of work left to do", Kubacki explained after the competition.

Today's second place was the first podium finish in a Grand Prix for Philipp Aschenwald. "Being on the podium in this home event means a lot to me. I'm really happy about my performance today and I didn't expect to achieve my first podium here. I'm in a really good shape this summer and now I could finally show it in a competition. Now I'll just enjoy the moment", he said.

Third-placed Piotr Zyla was also satisfied with his performance: "I'm happy about today's competition. I did a good job, but I still think there's room for improvement. Especially my second jump was not that good, but when it's enough to be on the podium you have to be satisfied."

Besides the today's winner Dawid Kubacki and Piotr Zyla, Maciej Kot also achieved a top result for Poland in fifth. Kamil Stoch finished 13th.

The Austrian jumpers achieved an extremely strong team result In their only home GP event this summer. Philipp Aschenwald (2nd), Gregor Schlierenzauer (4th), Stefan Kraft (6th) and Michael Hayboeck (8th) provided for a top result and lots of happy faces within the team of the Austrian Ski Association.

After lots of strong performances during the course of this summer, the team of Japan suffered a setback today. Grand Prix leader Yukiya Sato was the best Japanese in tenth and defended the yellow leader's bib with now 270 points ahead of Dawid Kubacki (260 points), but with the places 20 (Ryoyu Kobayashi), 23 (Taku Takeuchi), 28 (Keiichi Sato) and 29 (Junshiro Kobayashi) there was not that much left of the outstanding shape of the past weeks and months.

Peter Prevc and Anze Lanisek came in seventh and ninth for Slovenia, the best of the Germans was Karl Geiger in 17th. Stephan Leyhe was 19th, Richard Freitag 25th and Markus Eisenbichler failed to make the cut for the final round in 31st. Marius Lindvik came in eleventh and was the best Norwegian, Killian Peier finished 12th for Switzerland.

The final competition of the FIS Grand Prix 2019 will be held in Klingenthal (GER) next Saturday (qualification on Friday).

Full results