First win in the Grand Prix for Timi Zajc
Jul 21, 2019·Ski Jumping
Timi Zajc of Slovenia won the first individual competition of the FIS Grand Prix 2019 with jumps of 133.5 m and 128.5 m (277.9 points) ahead of Poland's Dawid Kubacki (271.3 points) and Evgeniy Klimov of Russia (266.8 points). Markus Eisenbichler was the best German and fourth.
This win in the first competition of the 2019 summer season was the first one in the Grand Prix for 19-year-old Slovene Timi Zajc. Last winter, Zajc claimed his maiden win in the World Cup, now the top talent from Slovenia also has a GP win in the bag. So far the fourth place in Courchevel last year was the career-best GP result for Zajc. The athlete, representing the club SSK Ljubno, showed convincing performances during the course of the entire weekend on the HS 134 hill in Wisla and took a well-deserved win on Sunday evening.
In absence of Japan's Ryoyu Kobayashi (last winter's overall World Cup champion will not compete in the Grand Prix before the event in Hakuba), local hero Dawid Kubacki finished second in front of an enthusiastic crowd. This was already the tenth GP podium in Wisla (7 team, 3 individual) for Kubacki.
The third place went to Russia's Evgeniy Klimov, who took his first, and so far only, World Cup win on the same hill this past winter.
Markus Eisenbichler showed a strong performance. He came in fourth, only 4.7 points behind Klimov and provided a good result for the German top athletes together with Karl Geiger, who was sixth. The field among the Top 10 was extremely tight and so Eisenbichler only had a lead of 0.1 points over fifth-placed Piotr Zyla.
Junshiro Kobayashi and Keiichi Sato achieved strong results for the Japanese team in seventh and eighth. Halvor Egner Granerud was the best Norwegian in eleventh.
All-in-all it was a good weekend for the two new head coaches Michal Dolezal (Poland) and Stefan Horngacher (Germany). On the other hand, it was not a good start of the season for the Austrians. After they finished only sixth in Saturday's team competition, only two Austrian jumpers were among the Top 30 today. Stefan Huber (22nd) and Gregor Schlierenzauer (25th) were the only Austrians who made the cut for the final round.
The FIS Grand Prix 2019 continues next weekend with three competitions (women's and men's individual, mixed team) in Hinterzarten (GER), where Timi Zajc (100 points) will wear the yellow leader's bib.
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