Andreas Kofler wins in Sochi ahead of Richard Freitag and Andreas Wellinger - Five Germans in Top Te

Andreas Kofler wins in Sochi ahead of Richard Freitag and Andreas Wellinger - Five Germans in Top Ten!

This has been an amazing day for Germany in far away Sochi, where the Olympic Winter Games will set place in 2014. No German missed the qualification that was held about two hours before the actual race. For others like Robert Kranjec, Sebastian Colloredo, both American jumpers, Alexey Romashov and Jurij Tepeš it was already the end of the day. Peter Prevc missed the qualification because of a fall after his 93m-jump. The German dominance was already shown with the qualification win for Richard Freitag from SG Nickelhütte Aue (98.5m; 124.9points). The farthest jump with 99m was performed by his team mate and SGP-winner 2012 Andreas Wank (124.2points). With a distance of 4.7points they are followed by Jaka Hvala and 0.2points behind the ladder landed Michael Neumayer. He shared his place with the best Polish jumper so far: Dawid Kubacki. The man with the bright blue eyes jumped 96.5m and banned Lukas Hlava, Lauri Asikainen and Reruhi Shimizu to the following places. Karl Geiger and Tom Hilde, who would like to finish top ten in a competition also, completed the list of the best ten jumpers in Sochi’s second qualification.

We should not forget to honor the performance of Mackenzie Boyd-Clowes, Karel Nurmsalu and Jernej Damjan as well as Borek Sedlak, Mika Kulmala and Dimitry Ipatov, who also made it into the competition.

After a small break they already got down to action:

Andreas Kofler, who improved fast during the first WC-weekends showed solid jumps of 101.5 and 102.5m (271.3points), which brought him an advantage of nearly 10points towards Richard Freitag (100/102.5m). German high-flyer Andreas Wellinger, who’s on the tip of everyone’s tongue, got rank five after his first performance of 100.5m and stepped up with 103m in the second round (with only 0.1points behind Freitag!!!). This brought him his first individual podium in the World-Cup- and this after three weekends! Let alone his team victory on the second weekend!

The best jump in the first round was shown by Anders Bardal, who again had some problems with a proper telemark and got lower judges points for his performance. Therefore he landed on rank three after his first try. In the final round he upped the ante and jumped 104m with the same small landing mistake. In the end this put him to the unloved place four (0.4points behind Wellinger).

The results of the second individual competition of men in Sochi impresses as if it would be a list of a national championship. At first we have Freitag and Wellinger on the podium, on rank five followed Severin Freund (100/103m; 259.5points) ahead of Karl Geiger (101/101.5m; 257.4points). The latter got his best position in a World-Cup so far! Behind them landed Simon Ammann and Reruhi Shimizu. The top ten was completed by Andreas Wank, being one of five Germans among the best ten jumpers!

Jaka Hvala finished eleventh, while Thomas Morgenstern only got rank 15. Martin Koch managed to get points again. Place 18 is the best from him in this season so far. His colleague Schlierenzauer barely scraped through the first round (27.) and ended up on rank 25.

Stjernen, Vassiliev, Fettner, Asikainen and Janda didn’t make it into the final round. They’ll get their next chance in Engelberg on December 14th(qualification), as well as December 15th and 16th.

• By Peggy Kierstan (@pikayartist)