Slovenia wins Super Team in Zao

With 722.2 points, the Slovenian duo of Nika Kriznar and Nika Prevc secured victory in the super team jumping event in Zao on Saturday evening, lapanese time. The Canadians Abigail Strate and Alexandria Loutitt took second place and their first ever World Cup podium in a team event with 709.7 points. On her 33rd birthday, Jacqueline Seifriedsberger and Eva Pinkelnig finished third with 697 points.

It was a great competition, even if it wasn't easy. I'm very happy that Nika and I managed to pull it off," beamed Kriznar after the competition. "It was my first team jumping competition and I really enjoyed it. I wasn't quite as easy as yesterday, but I'm still happy with my jumps," added Prevc. It was also Slovenia's first podium finish in a super team event, after Kriznar and Ema Klinec had failed to finish higher than fifth place the year before.

Yuki Ito and Sara Takanashi - the japanese duo - finished on the fourth position with 667.3 points. At almost 30 points, the gap to third place was quite large, but at almost 50 to fifth place it was even larger.

The teams from France, Norway and Germany battled for fifth place right from the start.  However, the Norwegians stood in their own way in the person of Silje Opseth, as she botched her landing at 92.5 meters in the second round and clearly touched the snow. At the end of the day, Opseth and Thea Minyan Bjoerseth retained fifth place with two solid attempts in the final.

2.9 points behind them was the French duo of Emma Chervet and Josephine Pagnier, who were ultimately more consistent than Juliane Seyfarth and Selina Freitag, who again finished one point lower than France in seventh place. While Freitag, as on the previous day, managed all jumps over 90 meters, Seyfarth only managed this in the second - so more than fifth place would have been out of reach anyway. Eighth place went to Annika Belshaw and Paige Jones from the USA.

The sister duo of Jessica and Lara Malsiner lost out by just 1.5 points in the battle for this final place for the third round. The team from Finland (Julia Kykkänen and Jenny Rautionaho) also had to retire after two runs. Behind them in eleventh place was the Swiss duo of Emely Torazza and Sina Arnet, who were represented in the super team for the first time.

Team Romania with Delia Anamaria Folea and Daniela Haralambie, the Romanian team finished Super Team on 13th place. In just two jumps, they were 16.5 points behind Poland (Natalia Slowik and Anna Twardosz), who were also competing in the super team for the first time and ultimately finished in twelfth place. This gave head coach Harald Rodlauer's team ten points - their first ever points of the season.