Dawid Kubacki is the first winner of 2021
Jan 01, 2021·Ski Jumping
Dawid Kubacki of Poland won the traditional New Year's competition in Garmisch-Partenkirchen on Friday ahead of Norway's Halvor Egner Granerud and his fellow countryman Piotr Zyla. Kubacki decided this extremely exciting competition in difficult conditions with an amazing jump on the new hill record of 144 m in the final round.
"This second jump was finally a really good one, that's what I've been waiting for. It feels great if you can show such a jump at the right moment", Kubacki said after his win. The Pole is now fourth in the overall ranking of the 4-Hills-Tournament, only 8.6 points behind the leader Halvor Egner Granerud. Karl Geiger, who was fifth today (four points behind Granerud), and Kamil Stoch (6.7 points behind Granerud) are second and third overall.
With regard to the 4-Hills overall ranking, last season's champion Dawid Kubacki explained: "It's only halftime right now, everything can still happen. I'm not focusing on the results, only on my jumps."
Today, Kubacki claimed his 5th World Cup win, the first this season.
Norway's Halvor Egner Granerud took the overall 4-Hills lead from Karl Geiger with his second place today. On the Olympic hill, he once again proved his fantastic shape and came in second only behind the outstanding Dawid Kubacki. "I'm very satisfied with my jumps today, they were good. It didn't matter, that I had to wait quite long before the second jump, I think we are all able to handle this, it happens from time to time", said Granerud.
With Piotr Zyla and Kamil Stoch in third and fourth in today's New Year's event, the competition was a triumph for the Polish team of head coach Michal Dolezal. Three athletes in the Top 4 in this traditional competition, that's amazing.
Philipp Aschenwald was the best Austrian in sixth, Markus Eisenbichler finished seventh and is now 23.5 behind Granerud in the overall ranking. "I'm a bit disappointed, but it was a difficult competition, and it was also at a very high level, that's not really typical for Garmisch. I know that I can do better, but I also made no major mistakes today", Eisenbichler said after the competition.
The 4-Hills-Tournament continues already on Saturday with the training and qualification in Innsbruck.
Statements after the New Year's competition in Garmisch-Partenkirchen (GER):
Karl Geiger: It was not easy today, I think for most jumpers today's competition was tough. In the first round, you quickly lost meters when the jump wasn't that good. Fortunately, my jump in the second round was really good and I'm very happy about that. I now had a very good and a good competition and now we move on to Innsbruck.
Anze Lanisek: From a technical point of view my jumps were very good. Unfortunately, I made a mistake in the telemark in the first round, but I have to accept it like it is. Tomorrow is a new day and I'll focus on Innsbruck now.
Stefan Kraft: The second jump felt pretty good, I can't tell yet, why it didn't go that far. I had some problems over the knoll and the jump actually over already then. The 4-Hills-Tournament is very exciting, but I think that Eisenbichler and Granerud will be the ones fighting for the win in the end.
Richard Freitag: I started better into the new than into the old one, so I'm quite satisfied. But if you have been fighting for wins before, it's hard to assess the performance. It's really very, very sad, that there aren't any fans here this time.
Pius Paschke: The conditions were a bit changing today, but there's nothing you can do about it. The overall ranking doesn't matter to me anymore after Oberstdorf, these are all just normal World Cups now. I think that it will definitely be an exciting 4-Hills when it comes to the overall title.
Martin Hamann: The conditions in the first round were a bit more difficult than in the second one, but I did a pretty good job today and so I'm really satisfied with my performance.
Alexander Stoeckl (Coach NOR): Halvor is jumping very consistently at an extremely high level. I think, that in equal conditions he would have had a chance to win today. Dawid had a great jump, but the headwind also helped him. Halvor is a very intelligent guy, he is calm, but he can also be funny. It's simply a good mix. It's very close between the Top 4 in the overall ranking and every one of them has the chance to win.
Stefan Horngacher (Coach GER): We can be totally satisfied with Karl today, Markus' jumps weren't that good, but he also achieved a good result. We wanted to perform better as a team than in Oberstdorf and we definitely did that. Martin Hamann had two great jumps and Pius Paschke improved his performance again, Richard Freitag could also score points. The conditions were more difficult than yesterday but sometimes have such competitions. I'm satisfied with the performances of the guys today.
