Portrait of Jurij Tepes
Jurij Tepes is a 26-year-old Slovenian ski jumper, brother of the flying lady Anja Tepes and son of well-known former ski jumper Miran Tepes, who is now the technical delegate at Men's FIS Ski Jumping World Cup and the right hand of the World Cup Race Director, Walter Hofer. But denying what most people say – the surname doesn’t help him in his notes.
Everything he so far achieved, he owes only to his hard work. Jurij Tepes started to jump at age of 6. In 2005 in the age of 16 he won the individual bronze medal and the team gold at the Junior World Championships in Rovaniemi, one year later in Kranj he won two silver medals and in 2007 in Planica he once again won the gold in team, individually placing on the 7th position.
In the World Cup he debuted in the 2005/2006 season, during the competition in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, where he took the 35th place and scored his first points in 2007 in Villach. He skipped the next seasons of the World Cup rivalry, by jumping occasionally, and his first full season in the World Cup was 2010/2011 in which his best place was 12 and in the overall ranking he finished 34th. But this year was very successful for him because of the World Championships in Oslo, at which he won the bronze medal in the team competition together with Peter Prevc, Jernej Damjan and Robert Kranjec.
In the season 2011/2012 he finished 24th in the overall World Cup standings and achieved one more important success together with his team – bronze medal at the FIS Ski-Flying World Championships in Vikersund. In the next season he entered to the world’s top and won the World Cup competition on March 24, 2013 in Planica. This success he repeated two years later in the same place. Until today he won two World Cup competitions and was ranked 6 times on the podium.
This season was very good for Tepes, with victory and three podiums. He also finished 3rd in the overall standings of the World Cup in ski flying and today in Planica gave a "perfect jump", with the 5x20 judges notes, which is the maximum an athlete can achieve for his style. But the best for 26 year old ski jumper is yet to come and I’m sure that his greatest successes will begin next season.
