Halvor Egner Granerud opens World Cup weekend with a win
Jan 08, 2021·Ski Jumping
The World Cup weekend in Titisee-Neustadt started with a prologue-win of Norway's Halvor Egner Granerud. The overall World Cup leader posted a jump of 140 m and came in ahead of Poland's Dawid Kubacki (139 m) and Marius Lindvik of Norway (141 m).
There were some long jumps on the first day of the Ski Jumping World Cup in the Black Forest. Andrzej Stekala and Jakub Wolny landed at 146 resp. 143 m in the training rounds, the good conditions and the perfectly prepared Hochfirst-hill allowed for long jump with it being dangerous for the athletes. In the prologue, it was then Ski Jumping at its finest. Austria's Daniel Huber had the longest jump in this round with 142.5 m, he finished fourth and proves the ambitions for a podium of the Austrians this weekend.
The planned qualification was turned into a prologue by the competition management because there were exactly 50 athletes participating and so a reduction of the field was not necessary. So the competition-status was ensured and the winner still received the prize money of CHF 3000.-. The travel restrictions from/to different countries are still making it very difficult for some teams to travel to the venues and compete in the World Cup.
Despite the lower number of competitors, the quality of the round was still very high. A very strong performance was once again shown by the team of Poland around Kamil Stoch and Dawid Kubacki. After Poland had four athletes in the Top 6 of the 4-Hills-Tournament just recently, there were four athletes among the best nine today and so they proved their outstanding position right now.
Best German was Pius Paschke in eighth, Ryoyu Kobayashi was the of the Japanese team in 14th, tied with Markus Eisenbichler. "The hill is very well prepared, it's amazing to jump here. In my jump I was too early at the take-off, it was not good. But I feel good and tomorrow my timing will be better, then we'll see", explained Markus Eisenbichler after his jump in the prologue.
The competition on the Hochfirst-hill in Neustadt starts on Saturday at 4 pm CET.
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