Germany defends team gold
Mar 06, 2021·Ski Jumping
The final Ski Jumping competition of the Nordic World Championships was yet another real highlight and not for the faint-hearted. The team event on the large hill on Saturday evening became a true nail-biter with four very strong teams fighting for the medals, and one of which had to go home empty-handed.
After an extremely exciting final, the hosting team of Germany could celebrate the gold medal, just like at the last World Championships in Seefeld 2019. Pius Paschke, Severin Freund, Markus Eisenbichler, and Karl Geiger scored a total of 1046.6 points. Once again Karl Geiger and Markus Eisenbichler were the best athletes on the team. Local hero Karl Geiger has now won a medal in each of the four competitions in his hometown.
"It's just crazy. I knew that we have a good chance here, but I didn't expect that it would go that well for me in every competition. I'm so very happy that I could achieve all that here at home. Today's competition was extremely cool, I was already looking forward to it this morning. It was so close, everyone did a great job. I think that my second jump today was my best one here at the WSC", said the overjoyed 28-year-old Oberstdorf-native.
Philipp Aschenwald, Jan Hoerl, Daniel Huber, and Stefan Kraft came in close behind the hosts in this high-class competition but claimed a well-deserved silver medal with 1035.5 points. "This is incredible. It's my first medal with the team and I'm just so very happy right now. I was so nervous before my first jump", Jan Hoerl, who stood on the podium at World Championships for the very first time today, said to Austrian TV.
Right behind the Austrians, the bronze medal went to Poland, represented by Piotr Zyla, Andrzej Stekala, Kamil Stoch, and Dawid Kubacki, with 1031.2 points. The outstanding athlete on the team, that was fighting for gold until the very last jump, was World Champion Piotr Zyla, who showed the best individual performance in today's competition.
After a great performance with consistently strong jumps, Japan (Yukiya Sato, Naoki Nakamura, Keiichi Sato, Ryoyu Kobayashi) finished in the unfortunate fourth place. They would have also deserved a medal today.
The three Prevc brothers Peter, Cene, and Domen and Anze Lanisek took the fifth place for Slovenia, followed by the Norwegians, who were already out of the race for the medals after the first two jumps of the competition, in partly difficult conditions, by Marius Lindvik and Daniel Andre Tande.
The team of Switzerland showed a good performance and finished seventh, the Russian Ski Federation was eighth.
Finland, the USA, the Czech Republic, Romania, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan could not qualify for the final round.
The 2021 Nordic World Championships are now over for the ski jumpers, the season is not. Due to the cancellation of the RAW AIR Tour, the athletes now have two weekends off with no World Cups. The big final of the season will then be held on the Ski Flying hill in Planica (SLO) from March 25th to 28th.
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