Perfect Saturday evening for the local heroes
Jul 20, 2019·Ski Jumping
The team of Poland (Piotr Zyla, Aleksander Zniszczol, Kamil Stoch, Dawid Kubacki) scored a total of 1094.1 points in the team competition in Wisla and took a clear win ahead of Slovenia (Tilen Bartol, Anze Lanisek, Peter Prevc, Timi Zajc; 1035.7 points) and Norway (Johann Andre Forfang, Robin Pedersen, Marius Lindvik, Daniel Andre Tande; 1029.2 points).
This success was a brilliant debut for the new head coach of the Polish team, Michal Dolezal. A win in his very first competition in this position, and that in a sold-out stadium in Wisla, in front of 5000 enthusiastic fans. The first day on the job can't be any better for a new head coach.
The fans at the Adam-Malysz-Hill in Wisla saw a wire-to-wire victory of the Polish athletes, who were just too strong for the rest of the field today. Kamil Stoch and Co. convinced with a close team performance.
The Slovenian team, lead by Timi Zajc, was very strong as well and came in second. And that even though Peter Prevc touched the ground with his hands after the landing of a great 128 m jump in the final round. Prevc only got 15 points by three of the judges and so it was an exciting fight for the second place again.
But Daniel Andre Tande, the final jumper of the Norwegians, didn't have his best day, landed already at 121 m and so the team of Norway had to be satisfied with the third place. And they could be happy about this result because Norway came in only 0.7 points ahead of the German team. Karl Geiger, Constantin Schmid, Stephan Leyhe and Markus Eisenbichler showed consistent performances, but closely missed the podium - the team of the new head coach Stefan Horngacher finished fourth in this summer's first competition.
The Japanese posted some strong jumps and would have earned a spot on the podium. But the team consists of four athletes and Yukiya Sato had a really bad day today and so he lost the podium finish for his team today.
Behind the Japanese, Austria was sixth, followed by Russia and the Czech Republic. The outstanding athlete of the Russian team was Evgeniy Klimov, who is also among the top contenders for Sunday's individual event. Viktor Polasek was the best of the Czech team.
The young teams of Switzerland and Finland failed to make the cut for the final round of the Top 8, but they could gain some valuable experience.
The individual competition in Wisla starts on Sunday at 5:30 pm CET.
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