Anze Lanisek has made himself the top favorite for the World Championships on the normal hill by winning the qualification. From the German team, Karl Geiger in particular is really strong.
With a jump of 98 meters, Anze Lanisek secured victory in the qualification and made himself the top favorite for the first individual decision at the Nordic World Ski Championships in Planica on the normal hill. The Slovene scored a total of 141.6 points in front of his home crowd on Friday evening and beat Austria’s Stefan Kraft, who had 97.5 meters (137.4 pts). Third place was taken by another ski jumper from Slovenia, Timi Zajc (99 m; 137.1 pts).
“It was a really good jump and might hardly be better at the moment. Now I’m waiting for tomorrow and looking forward to jumping in front of hopefully many spectators. I’m sure that more spectators will be here then,” said qualifying winner Lanisek, looking at the surprisingly sparsely filled stadium in the famous “Valley of the Schanzen”.
Geiger increases significantly
The best German ski jumper was Karl Geiger, who improved significantly compared to the weak training performance and took fourth place with 98 meters. “We analyzed the jumps well yesterday. We have been working on improvements and that was already going in the right direction today,” analyzed the man from Oberstdorf. Besides him, Andreas Wellinger (9th) also finished in the top ten with 97 meters.
Constantin Schmid, who prevailed once morest his team colleague Philipp Raimund in the internal elimination the day before, finished in a respectable twelfth place. Markus Eisenbichler left a lot more room for improvement as he did not get past 25th place.
Kobayashi and Granerud get involved
In the battle for gold, silver and bronze, overall World Cup leader Halvor Egner Granerud also has a good starting position: the Norwegian finished sixth behind Ryoyu Kobayashi from Japan, but is the only Norwegian who can be at the forefront.
Kubacki is making a strong comeback
After he had to do without yesterday’s training rounds due to back problems, Dawid Kubacki also made a strong start on the normal hill and was the best Pole right away with eighth place – but defending champions Piotr Zyla (10th) and Kamil Stoch (11th) also presented themselves strong. “I’m still in pain, but it’s much better. I don’t have quite the freedom of movement as usual, but my jumps today were a good sign,” said the overall World Cup runner-up at ‘Eurosport’ with confidence.
» World Cup calendar 2022/2023 (men): All dates at a glance
In addition, the Austrian Daniel Tschofenig (7th) also ended up in the top ten and can hope for the first individual medal of his career following strong training performances in advance. Four-time Olympic champion Simon Ammann from Switzerland also presented himself surprisingly well with 13th place.
On Saturday at 4 p.m. the trial run is on the program before it starts at 5 p.m. (everything live at skispringen.com) for the first time in men’s precious metal. Before that, the ski jumpers will carry out their team decision from 12:15 p.m.
Also interesting: Beforehand, the ski jumpers completed another training session, which was overshadowed by Sara Takanashi’s serious fall. The Japanese woman was taken to the hospital. All other events can be found in our World Cup ticker!
