The man for qualifications made it again: Lukas Hlava won in Sochi and set new hill record!

The man for qualifications made it again: Lukas Hlava won in Sochi and set new hill record!

Although he had bad luck in Kuusamo last weekend, landing on place 34 in the individual competition, 28-year old Hlava didn’t let himself to be disturbed and got back to full power in yesterday’s qualification in Sochi, Russia. The normal hill, which is the only one with snow right now because of the rather warm temperatures at the Rus Ski Gorki sport complex, about 50km away from Sochi. The 340.000-inhabitant city itself is at the coast of the black sea and home of different kind of Russian sportsmen just as soccer- and tennis-players. But the ski-jumping circus seems to like to be there and jump on the normal hill for the first time. This is why we saw several hill records yesterday, starting with Russia’s national group, to Yuta Watase(102m), Reruhi Shimizu (102.5m, who ended the qualification on the second place) and to Lukas Hlava, who jumped two meters over the hill size (106) and gained incredible 108m (130.2points)! Even if we’ll have similar conditions today, it will be a hard time for the world’s best to beat Lukas Hlava’s jump. Other great jumps have been shown by Martin Koch (103m), pretty nice for the tall guy, who likes tall hills way more, and former yellow bib-owner Thomas Morgenstern (105.5m). This promises a close fight today!

Andreas Kofler came in 3rdwith 101m, while Richard Freitag landed on the place behind him, although Schuster wanted him to start two gates lower (98.5m). Tom Hilde and Michael Neumayer (both with 102.5m) can be really satisfied with the following places. Especially the latter received an amazing form, which he hopefully can hold during the long winter.

Also to mention is the really nice result by Ilia Rosliakov, 29, from the Moskva Wvsm skiclub. He started as number 6 for the Russian national group and held the leadership for the long time of 24 jumpers. His jump of 98.5m brought him the 13th place in the end. Good luck to him for a repetition of this today.

A positive trend was also shown by the Polish team. While Kamil Stoch is in Ramsau for a specific training with head coach Lukasz Kurczek, his team mates improved with an incredible speed compared to last weekend’s results. Dawid Kubacki has been the best with 101.5m (10.), followed closely by Matciej Kot (100m; 12.).

Finland’s Lauri Asikainen is giving us some hope for saving Finnish ski-jumping. He ended up on rank 17 with 99m. It seems like all eyes are on him and Ville Larinto, who’s back after a long injury-caused time out and not back to full power yet. He is 37th and can show his best in today’s competition.

All German jumpers are qualified for today, while Robert Kranjec, Andrea Morassi and both US jumpers are out.

Andreas Wank nearly fell at the outrun, while Manuel Fettner actually did. Wank secured himself place 29 and will be part of today’s race. Fettner had less luck and is out.

The weather report shows rain for Sochi today, which obviously will stay like this until the afternoon. The competition of the men will start at 16.00 CET, while the ladies most likely will have to cope with the wet weather at 13.00! Stay tuned for information about both competition and detailed reports!

• By Peggy Kierstan (@pikayartist)