Halvor Egner Granerud wins in Nizhny Tagil
Nov 21, 2021·Ski Jumping
Norway's Halvor Egner Granerud won this winter's second Ski Jumping World Cup competition in Nizhny Tagil (RUS). Last season's overall World Cup champion had a clear lead over Karl Geiger of Germany and Austria's Stefan Kraft.
Once again, Granerud showed jumps on an extremely high level and not even the strong snowfall, which made it very difficult for the athletes towards the end of the second round, was able to stop him. It was the 12th individual World Cup win for Granerud, no Norwegian jumper has ever won more. "It was a lot of fun today, both jumps were good and I just really like this hill here", said Granerud, who won both competitions in Nizhny Tagil a year ago.
After his win yesterday, Karl Geiger could show yet another great performance and he was rewarded with the second place. "It almost can't get any better, I had two really good competitions and I'm just happy that I had such a great start of the season", explained Geiger, who now leads the overall World Cup with 180 points, followed by Granerud (160 points).
The third place went to Austria's Stefan Kraft, who came from behind after being only 14th at half-time. "It really hurt that I could only watch yesterday's competitions after I failed to qualify on Friday. Today the qualification went well for me and now I'm very glad that I could achieve such a great result today and finish on the podium. I'm extremely happy about the third place", Kraft said.
The places four, five, and six went to Timi Zajc (SLO)), Cene Prevc (SLO) and Switzerland's Killian Peier, Anze Lanisek (SLO) was seventh, Markus Eisenbichler (GER) eighth.
Andreas Wellinger was happy about his 18th place today after a long drought: "This feels really good, finally I was able to score some points again. My goal was to score at least one point here and now I have 14, that's good", said Wellinger, who could confirm the positive trend he showed in summer.
Top favorite Ryoyu Kobayashi of Japan, who finished second in Saturday's competition, was disqualified in the qualification today because his suit did not meet the rules.
The teams will now stay in Nizhny Tagil for two more days and train there, before they travel from Russia to Finnland, where the next World Cup will be held in Ruka. Two individual competitions will take place there next Saturday and Sunday.
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