Jurij Tepes, Robert Kranjec, Peter Prevc, Jaka Hvala
- FIS
The Slovenian team won the opening event of the
World Cup in Klingenthal. With 540.6 points, Jurij
Tepes, Robert Kranjec, Jaka Hvala and Peter Prevc
took the win ahead of Germany (528.3 points) and
Japan (523.6 points). The Polish team closely missed
the podium as fourth with 521.1 points. Favourites
Austria finished fifth (499.8 points) and Norway
was sixth (461.6 points).
The second round of the competition in the Vogtland-Arena
was canceled after only a few jumpers due to strong
wind.
It was a great day for Jurij Tepes, who was on the
Slovenian team that won the final team competition
last season in Planica. "It was not easy today,
you never knew where the wind would come from. But
everyone of our team jumped well."
Karl Geiger, competing in a team competition in
the World Cup for the first time, was also satisfied:
"Of course it's a great feeling to be on the
team. And I think I did a good job. Now I want to
try to show consistent performances and achieve
Top 15 results regularly."
Taku Takeuchi was happy about the podium result
for the Japanese: "We are very happy today.
We always try to be among the best, but we don't
take such good results for granted."
At first it seemed like the teams of Germany and
Poland would fight for the title. Andreas Wank jumped
on 138.5 m after Zyla posted a 133.5 m jump. With
141 m Krzysztof Biegun raised hopes for Poland,
but Karl Geiger (135.5 m) and Robert Kranjec also
showed strong jumps. The Slovene had the longest
jump of the day with 141.5 m.
The jumps of the third group were crucial. Dawid
Kubacki landed at 123 m. Poland was now fourth.
Jaka Hvala (134.5 m) took the lead for Slovenia
against Andreas Wellinger (133.5 m). Severin Freund
was not able to close the gap with 123 m. Peter
Prevc (124.5 m) then secured the win for the Slovenian
team. Taku Takeuchi captured the third place for
Japan with 133.5 m. Kamil Stoch landed at 132.5
m - not enough for the podium.
The performances of the Austrians were also not
good enough to achieve a podium result. Only Thomas
Morgenstern had a convincing performance with his
jump of 134.5 m. Wolfgang Loitzl (125.5 m) and Andreas
Kofler (129.5 m), were not among the best. Gregor
Schlierenzauer didn't show a top performance as
well with his 127.5 m.
The Norwegian team had a rough start with a 113
m jump of Ole Marius Ingvaldsen. Tom Hilde (128
m), Anders Fannemel (124.5 m) and Anders Bardal
(123 m) also didn't reach the 130 m mark. The Czech
around veteran Jakub Janda had to fight to qualify
for the final round right from the start. With 453.3
points Janda, Lukas Hlava, Jan Matura and Cestmir
Kozisek finished close ahead of Finland (452.0 points)
and Switzerland (451.6 points).
Russia (440 points), France (425.2 points), Italy
(416.4 points), Korea (406.3 points) and Kazakhstan
(324.5 points) had no real chance to achieve a top-eight
result.
The World Cup opening in the Vogtland-Arena continues
on Sunday with the individual competition starting
with the trial round at 12:30 pm CET.
