Oslo: Kraft wins - Huber leads RAW AIR

World Cup leader Stefan Kraft from Austria showed all his class in the first of two FIS Ski Jumping World Cups in Oslo. In extremely difficult conditions, Kraft came out on top ahead of Norway's Kristoffer Eriksen Sundal and his team-mate Jan Hörl.
Daniel Huber defended his lead in the overall RAW AIR rankings with sixth place in the day's classification.

It was not a great competition at the venerable Holmenkollen in Oslo, especially in the first round.
The wind conditions in Oslo on Sunday were too difficult and changeable. Some athletes had no real chance in their jumps due to the difficult wind conditions, they were eaten, as the ski jumpers say. These included Finland's Eetu Nousiainen (46th), Norway's Robert Johansson (44th) and Philipp Raimund (48th) from Germany - none of them had a real chance of reaching the final.
It was one of those days when you needed that little bit of luck to be at the top. 
And this little bit of luck combined with his extra class gave Stefan Kraft the victory in today's competition. Kraft won by a superior margin of 8.8 points ahead of Sundal.

"It's unbelievable. The second jump was a rocket. I caught it exactly. I had the usual trajectory. I'm very happy that we found the right levers from yesterday to today. I'm very happy about that. We have now started with the raw air series, it will be decided at the ski flying in Vikersund," explained Kraft.

Second place went to Kristoffer Eriksen Sundal, who has already impressed with two third places this winter (Willingen and Sapporo). Second place is the best result for the Norwegian so far.

Third place went to Lahti winner Jan Hörl: "It's sensational that I can stand on the podium with 'Krafti' again. It seems that the hill doesn't really matter at the moment. I did a really cool job. Of course it was a wind lottery. I got it right twice. That's part of it, but I'm happy to accept it," said Hörl.
With Timi Zajc, Peter Prevc and returnee Anze Lanisek in 7th, 8th and 11th place, the Slovenians can be satisfied. Piotr Zyla was the best Pole in 12th place.

The best athlete from the German squad was Pius Paschke in 14th place, Andreas Wellinger was 20th: "It was just the Holmenkollen, I didn't really enjoy the wind points I got today and what I felt, but that's the way it is sometimes," said Wellinger.

Daniel Huber was able to defend his lead in the overall RAW AIR ranking after his victory in the qualification yesterday. Huber said: "The jumping was really difficult today. It was two solid jumps and a cool competition. I'm having a lot of fun at the moment and I really want to keep that up."
Huber now leads with 382.2 points ahead of the day's winner Kraft, who improved from 15th to 2nd place. Kraft is 2.8 points behind Huber, followed by Johann Andre Forfang (5th today), 0.7 points behind Kraft.
With Jan Hörl and Michael Hayböck in 4th and 5th place, four of the top 5 in the overall RAW AIR ranking after three of 16 rounds are from Austria.

The second competition starts on Sunday at 14:20, preceded by the qualification at 13:00.