Team Austria wins season opener

The Austrian Ski Jumping team won the first competition of the 2020/21 World Cup season in Wisla (POL). With Michael Hayboeck, Philipp Aschenwald, Daniel Huber, and Stefan Kraft, the team of the new head coach Andreas Widhoelzl came in ahead of Germany and Poland.
It was a good start of the season for the ski jumpers in the Polish town of Wisla.

In good weather conditions and without spectators at the Adam-Malysz hill, the team of Austria claimed its first win in the first World Cup competition with Andreas Widhoelzl as head coach. "It was a very good day, of course, I was a bit nervous because it was my first competition as the coach. Now I'm very satisfied with the performances of the athletes, all four of them showed solid performances in the competition and didn't try to do something extra, that was the basis for today's win. I'm looking forward to the individual competition tomorrow because we have two more athletes here who are also able to jump on that same level", said an obviously satisfied Andreas Widhoelzl after the competition.

Behind the Austrians, who scored a total of 1078.0 points, the team of Germany, with Constantin Schmid, Pius Paschke, Karl Geiger, and Markus Eisenbichler, finished second, only 8.7 points behind today's winners. Head coach Stefan Horngacher told after the competition: "I'm very satisfied, we were fighting for the win and in the end, it was really, really close. The conditions were great today, who had to jump very well in order to be among the best. We, as a team, can build on today's result."

"It was exciting until the very end, we could have also won today. The feeling to compete again and be on the podium is amazing. All the best to Stephan Leyhe at home, hopefully, his knee is doing fine", said Karl Geiger, who is one of the top contenders for the overall World Cup title this winter.

The third place went to the hosting team of Poland. Piotr Zyla, Klemens Muranka, Dawid Kubacki, and Kamil Stoch were jumping on a high level: "It was a competition on a very high level, we gave our all as a team. The third place is a big success for us in this winter's first competition. Personally, I was struggling with extreme headaches during the trial round and the competition, it was a hard fight for me and I hope I'll feel better tomorrow."
With a total of 1061.5 points, Poland was only 7.8 points behind the second place and had a real chance to win until the end.

The fourth place went to the team of Norway, followed by Japan, Slovenia, Russia, and Switzerland.

The second competition in Wisla, an individual event, starts on Sunday at 4 pm CET.

Full results