The Austrian team celebrated a double victory in
the qualification for the FIS Grand Prix in front
of their home crowd in Hinzenbach. Andreas Kofler
won ahead of Michael Hayboeck, Severin Freund of
Germany was third.
With 93.5 m Andreas Kofler showed the longest jump
in the qualification round and took the first place
with 127.2 points. His teammate Michael Hayboeck
jumped on 91.5 m and came in second with 122.5 points.
Kofler and Hayboeck were not the only Austrians
among the best on Saturday. In their first appearance
this summer, Gregor Schlierenzauer (90.5 m) and
Wolfgang Loitzl (91.5 m) were fourth and sixth.
Schlierenzauer also posted the longest jump of the
day with 97 m in the second training round. A total
of eight of twelve local heroes of Austria made
the cut for Sunday's competition.
In between the Austrians landed Germany's Severin
Freund, who was third with 90.5 m (122.3 points)
and Japanese Yuta Watase, who shared the fourth
place with Schlierenzauer with his 91 m.
Besides Freund, also his two young teammates Karl
Geiger (8th) and Marinus Kraus (11th) had no problems
qualifying for Sunday's event. The same also applies
for Finnish veteran Janne Ahonen, who returned with
a seventh place after his competition break in the
last few weeks. With this performances he was clearly
the best of his team, but also Olli Muotka (21st)
and Jarkko Maeaettae (35th) can take part in the
competition.
The best Czech in the qualification, Roman Koudelka,
landed on a shared ninth place with Italian Davide
Bresadola. Behind Ilmir Hazetdinov of Russia (12th),
Vincent Descombes Sevoie of France (13th) and Austrian
Manuel Fettner (14th), the two best Poles, Dawid
Kubacki and Klemens Muranka, were 15th and 16th.
Rune Velta was the best Norwegian as 18th. His teammate
Kenneth Gangnes fell in his jump on 85.5 m. He was
able to walk out of the outrun, but he was lumping
and so he had to be checked in the First-Aid tent.
The qualification this afternoon was also successful
for Canada's Mackenzie Boyd-Clowes, Heung-Chul Choi
of Korea, Nick Fairall of the USA and Kazakh Marat
Zhaparov. Among the 22 jumpers who failed to make
the cut for the competition were Piotr Zyla, Vladimir
Zografski and David Zauner.
The longest jumps of the already pre-qualified athletes
were shown by Maciej Kot (92.5 m) and Jan Ziobro
(89 m) of Poland.