Team Japan surprises in Zakopane

The ski jumpers of Japan (Naoki Nakamura, Keiichi Sato, Yukiya Sato, Junshiro Kobayashi) won Saturday's team event at the FIS Grand Prix in Zakopane with a total of 961.9 points ahead of Poland (Piotr Zyla, Jakub Wolny, Kamil Stoch, Dawid Kubacki; 951.1 points) and Norway (Halvor Egner Granerud, Thomas Aasen Markeng, Marius Lindvik, Johann Andre Forfang; 931.2 points).

In front of over 10'000 fans, a record crowd for summer events, the Japanese benefited from an extremely close team performance. None of them showed a weakness, all four athletes posted two strong jumps. In the end they had a lead of 10.8 points over the Polish team, which was only seventh, 40 points behind the leader, temporarily. For the Japanese team, this success is another stop back to the world's elite. 2 x Sato, Junshiro Kobayashi and Naoki Nakamura were unbeatable today, and there's also high-flyer Ryoyu Kobayashi who will make his debut this summer at that Grand Prix in Hakuba next weekend.

It was the second win in a team Grand Prix event for Japan, the first won was in Hakuba 1999. "It's unbelievable. I didn't expect the win today, I thought we might be able to finish on the podium if it goes well for us. Everyone jumped very well today. In the next competitions, Ryoyu Kobayashi will also take part and so our team will be even stronger then", said Naoki Nakamura, who was third in Courchevel last weekend.
The athletes of Hideharu Miyahira (who takes a break right now and is not in Zakopane) are the "team of the hour".

Today's competition started with various surprises. The favorites of Poland were only seventh after three jumpers before Dawid Kubacki brought them up to fourth after the first round. In the second round all four Polish jumpers had good jumps and so they could move up to second overall in front of the enthusiastic crowd. The outstanding athlete on the team of head coach Michal Dolezal was Dawid Kubacki. "I'm very happy that the Grand Prix returned to Zakopane. There's a huge potential here and I hope we will continue this tradition. The atmosphere here in Poland is always amazing", told the World Champion from Seefeld.

The Norwegians also had more problems than expected at the beginning. In the final round, Forfang and Co. then posted some strong jumps and so the team of head coach Alex Stoeckl came in on the well-deserved third place. Johann Andre Forfang said: "It was a great competition and really fun today. My jumps were quite strong, I wasn't jumping that well in training lately so I'm really satisfied with my performance today."

Only Karl Geiger top for Germany
The German team came in fourth, clearly behind the Norwegians. Karl Geiger, Constantin Schmid, Stephan Leyhe and Richard Freitag scored 905.4 points and finished 25.8 points behind the third place. Karl Geiger was the best of the team today and he would have finished third in an individual ranking, just behind Dawid Kubacki and Norway's Johann Andre Forfang.

After an outstanding first jump of Tilen Bartol, the Slovenian team was in the lead for a while, but in the end they could not keep up with the top teams and finished fifth overall.

Gregor Schlierenzauer strong again
The team of Austria was sixth today. Gregor Schlierenzauer, who has already set a highlight with his second place in Hinterzarten three weeks ago, was the best athlete on the team of Andreas Felder. Schlierenzauer is on his way back to the top.

Strong Swiss team
The team of Switzerland did a very good job today. They had no problems qualifying for the final round of the best eight teams and, lead by Killian Peier, Simon Ammann, Andreas Schuler and Dominik Peter had good jumps and came in seventh overall.

Russia was eighth, the teams of the Czech Republic and the USA failed to make the cut for the final round.

The individual competition in Zakopane starts on Sunday at 1 pm CET.

Full results