Italian ski jumpers celebrate double victory in Rasnov

Dream result for the ski jumpers from Italy at the FIS Grand Prix in Rasnov (ROU). Lara Malsiner won her first ever Grand Prix ahead of her teammate Annika Sieff and Japan's Nozomi Maruyama.

Malsiner managed jumps of 94 and 95.5 meters on the HS 97 hill in Rasnov, Sieff also achieved the best result of her career with 16.1 points (88 and 90 meters) behind Malsiner and second place.

The result in Rasnov was a huge boost for Italy's new coach Harry Rodlauer, who took over the Italian women's team together with Romed Moroder after last season. 

“This is incredible, it's my first win and that's despite the fact that summer has never really been my thing, I usually do better in winter,” explained the overwhelmed winner. “The team result today is great, we always make sure we have the right mix of young and older athletes and then one pushes the other. We got on well with the new coaches right from the start and you could see that in the result for the whole team,” said a delighted Malsiner, who is now on the 4th place of the FIS Grand Prix overall ranking.

Coach Harry Rodlauer explained after the competition: “The result is also surprising for us, especially because the Slovenian team was very strong here in training yesterday.

We worked out our concept with the athletes after training yesterday. They knew that they could jump, but the fact that they could do it so quickly surprised us all. Today I'm happy with the whole team, all 5 athletes were really strong today. You always need a bit of luck and we had that today with the good jumps, so it worked out in the end,” said a delighted Rodlauer.

In addition to the day's winner Lara Malsiner and Annika Sieff in second place, Martina Ambrosi (12th place), Jessica Malsiner (19th) and Martina Zanitzer (25th) finished in the points for Italy.

The best Slovenian in 4th place was Tina Erzar, while World Champion Ema Klinec and overall World Cup winner Nika Prevc finished 7th and 9th for Slovenia.

France's Lilou Zepchi surprised in 6th place.

The women from China provided the second particularly strong team result of the day: all 6 athletes made it into the top 30, with Qi Liu finishing in 11th place.

Local hero Daniela Haralambie finished in 15th place.

Official result

The second FIS Women's Grand Prix in Rasnov starts on Sunday at 10:30 am.