Start of the Summer Grand Prix in Wisla, Poland

SkiJumpingItaly is back after some days of absence t bring you a summary of the week.

We hope you are as stoked as we are because of the beginning of the Summer Grand Prix with the Poland tour.

The Summer Grand Prix 2012 starts

Wisla, a small town at the frontier to Czech Republic, welcomes to the beginning of the summer season. Its stadium with the Adam Malysz jumping hill, which reopened in 2008, was also a venue of the Poland tour last July, when Thomas Morgenstern won the competition ahead of Pavel Karelin and Gregor Schlierenzauer. The summer hill record is hold by Kamil Stoch (134.5m; Hill size 134m). Unfortunately some of the best jumpers, such as Thomas Morgenstern, Severin Freund and Gregor Schlierenzauer will not start this weekend. But don’t be sad: the elite around WC-winner Anders Bardal, Kamil Stoch, Richard Freitag, and ski-flying world champion Robert Kranjec and his team mate with the great comeback after a serious injury Peter Prevc will guarantee a tensing weekend.

Qualification for the first Summer Grand Prix

Thursday’s qualification in Wisla for today’s competition went pretty well for Dawid Kubacki with his jump of 122meters (111.8 points) although the wind conditions haven’t been good for the 69 ski-jumpers, who took part.

Second was Yuta Watase, who had a longer inrun (three gates higher than Kubacki) and there for a longer jump than the others (126 meters). Robert Hrgota seems to get a good form and became third (123,5m) ahead of Lukas Müller (119m), Bartlomiej Klusek (118.5m) and Maciej Kot (124m).

The US team can be proud of Anders Johnson, who managed to be qualified as 36., as well as of team mate Peter Frenette (39.).

All six German athletes are qualified also, best was Michael Neymayer with a good seventh rank.

Unfortunately the wind found some victims among the jumpers: David Zauner, who has been pretty good in training, landed on rank 49 and therefore missed the qualification.

Poor Rune Velta hurt his foot while playing volleyball (on his birthday) and will not start this weekend at all. His prequalified place will take Tomaz Naglic, who formerly got place 41 in qualification.

The first competition in Wisla

The Summer Grand Prix 2012 started with a team competition yesterday in the evening. Proud winners have been the athletes from Slovenia around Peter Prevc, Robert Kranjec, Jurij Tepeš and Robert Hrgota.

The competition ended after the first round, which secured the victory for team Slovenia with 479.1 points followed closely by Poland and Germany (477.9 and 474.4 points). The reason for the cancellation of the final round was an electricity problem of the flood-lighting and the following blackout of the power stand-by unit. Unfortunately it was too late in the evening to jump without the light and the problem couldn’t be fixed in this time.

Slovenia’s team showed continuously good jumps (e.g. with Juij Tepeš’ 127.5m), Poland followed with Maciej Kot jumping 125m.

Robert Hrgota stated in yesterday’s press conference: “We already have been strong in the trial round and wanted to take this into the competition. It worked. We are super satisfied.”

The German team consisting of Andreas Wank, Michael Neymayer, Maximilian Mechler and Richard Freitag completed the podium with an awesome jump of 128.5m.

Lukas Müller, Michael Hayböck, David Zauner and Wolfgang Loitzl from Austria got rank four ahead of team Japan and the athletes from Norway with a 128meter-jump by first jumper Andreas Stjernen.

Rank seven went to the Czech Republic. Also not convincing have been the Finns (Janne Happonen, Olli Muotka, Anssi Koivuranta and Ville Larinto) on place eight.

Today’s competition starts at 17:00. Eurosport 2 broadcasts live. Eurosport 1 starts at 17:45. We are excited for a tensing competition!

- by Peggy Kierstan (@pikayartist)