Home win for German mixed team
Jul 27, 2019·Ski Jumping
The German ski jumpers Juliane Seyfarth, Karl Geiger, Agnes Reisch, and Richard Freitag won the mixed team event in Hinterzarten on Saturday with a total of 947.8 points ahead of Japan (Nozomi Maruyama, Junshiro Kobayashi, Sara Takanashi, Keiichi Sato; 932.3 points) and Slovenia (Nika Kriznar, Peter Prevc, Ursa Bogataj, Ziga Jelar; 927.7 points).
The German showed a close team performance and their win was never in jeopardy with a solid lead of 15.5 points. All four German athletes had strong jumps in the only mixed team event of this FIS Grand Prix season. Karl Geiger posted the longest jump of the day with 107 m and the Oberstdorf-native was also the best in an individual ranking with 256.3 points. The team World Champion will definitely fight for the win in the individual competition Saturday evening.
Juliane Seyfarth explained after the competition: I'm always a bit more nervous before team events, because you are not only responsible for your own performance. It's a lot of fun to compete together with the men and we pushed each other. It would be interesting if there would be more mixed team events".
Lead by yesterday's winner Sara Takanashi, the team of Japan came in second. The two young athletes, Keiichi Sato and Nozomi Maruyama did a great job and proved head coach Hideharu Miyahira right to name them to the team for today's event. Sara Takanashi and Junshiro Kobayashi showed solid performances and secured the strong second place for Team Nippon.
The third place went to Slovenia with strong jumps of Nika Kriznar and Peter Prevc and solid performances of Ursa Bogataj and Ziga Jelar. During the course of the competition, Slovenia was even second, but in the end they came in close behind Japan. A result with which they were definitely satisfied. "I really like the hill and I'm very happy about the third place. It was easier to jump today because it was not as hot as yesterday", said Ursa Bogataj.
The team of Austria finished fourth and record World Cup winner Gregor Schlierenzauer presented himself in a great shape with two jumps of 106.5 m. It will be interesting to see if he can repeat this performance in the individual competition at 6:30 pm CET.
Norway finished fifth with an outstanding performance of Olympic champion Maren Lundby who jumped on 105.5 m and 106.5 m. The teams of Russia, the Czech Republic, and Italy were sixth, seventh, and eighth.
