Team Austria wins nail-biter in Wisla
Dec 04, 2021·Ski Jumping
It has been the most exciting team competition in the Ski Jumping World Cup for a while. The team of Austria (Manuel Fettner, Jan Hoerl, Daniel Huber, and Stefan Kraft) took a narrow win ahead of Germany (Pius Paschke, Stephan Leyhe, Markus Eisenbichler, Karl Geiger) and Slovenia (Cene Prevc, Peter Prevc, Timi Zajc, Anze Lanisek) on Saturday.
At first it seemed as if it would not be possible to carry out a Ski Jumping competition in Wisla. The wind at the Adam-Malysz-hill was too strong, and so the trial round had to be canceled, but when the competition started the wind conditions got calmer and the event could take place as planned, even if influenced by the wind.
"It was a really tough competition today, almost every team had an athlete who landed at 100 m or 110 m. We were the most consistent today and we also had the necessary luck in order to come out on top. Today we showed that we are in really good shape, this result gives us confidence after it didn't go that well for us at the beginning of the season", said Stefan Kraft.
The German team showed a strong performance and came in only 0.3 points behind the Austrians. "The conditions were very difficult today, we have to be very satisfied with the result. Unfortunately, Markus had a bad first jump and both jumps of Pius Paschke were not that good either. The conditions were really changing a lot today, but in order to win you need very good jumps and we didn't have that", explained German head coach Stefan Horngacher.
The third place went to the Slovenian jumpers, who were in the lead for a long time. Anze Lanisek, who claimed his first World Cup win in Ruka last weekend, had a bad day today and it was him who scored the least number of points for his team.
The home team of Poland finished fourth. It came as a disappointment for the many fans at the Adam-Malysz-hill, that the Poles, who were in the lead after the first round, lost their hopes to finish on the podium after a 97 m jump of Dawid Kubacki.
The strong Japanese team came in fifth, Norway finished sixth after all the hopes for a top result were lost with Robert Johansson's first jump of 93.5 m.
Russia was seventh and Switzerland eighth.
The second competition in Wisla, an individual event, starts on Sunday at 4 pm CET.
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