Richard Freitag back on the tracks with winning the qualification in Lillehammer

Richard Freitag back on the tracks with winning the qualification in Lillehammer

06/12/2013 19:30

(Richard Freitag) SkiJumpingItaly 2013 - (c) Kathrin Müller

Germany’s Richard Freitag, who suffered a fatigue fracture of his left foot, is back in the team and proved that this short break didn’t do anything to his form.

With a jump of 98.5m (126.1pts), he won the qualification with a small advantage of 0.2pts ahead of Kamil Stoch (100m). The latter showed the farthest jump of the day and landed exactly on the HS of the normal hill in Lillehammer. Third was Karl Geiger with 99.5m (123.7pts). The rest of the top ten showed a rather interesting result. It is no surprise to find Severin Freund on place four (94.5m) but Alexey Romashov (6th), Jan Ziobro on rank seven along with Gregor Deschwanden and all of them ahead of Noriaki Kasai (9th), Robert Kranjec (10th), Anders Bardal (11th) and Peter Prevc is a really interesting fact. It shows that the elite of this sport consists of more than a few jumpers and that the performances are all on a wide and amazing level. It also means, that competitions will get even more tensing and unpredictable- not because of the wind but because we have so many amazing jumpers, who are competitive to fight for podium places. That this brings a hard job to the head coaches of some teams, is the other side of the medal. Take the Germans for example- who should be chosen for team competitions? They are all good enough for this, new addition Marinus Kraus as much as the high-flyers Freund and Freitag.

(Alexey Romashov) SkiJumpingItaly 2013 - (c) Peggy Kierstan

But back to the qualification results: Nice to mention is that Janne Ahonen is fighting like hell to remain in the top fifteen and to bring a boost into his team Finland. He finished on rank 14.

Ronan Lamy-Chappuis becomes better from jump to jump and is on his best way to be a stable part of the French team. Today, he landed on the 24th place. Also Marco Grigoli has justified hopes to remain in the A-team with being 28th in the qualification. Also Robert Johansson can be satisfied with finishing as 30th on his home hill next to the best that the World-Cup has. Rok Justin, the 20-year old Slovenian newcomer was the last one to qualify for tomorrow’s competition.

Jan Matura, Janne Happonen, Dimitry Vassiliev and Anders Fannemel on the other hand failed to reach the start list of the individual competition. They will get a new chance on Sunday morning.

Dawid Kubacki and Lukas Hlava were disqualified due to their suits, while Marat Zhaparov had the wrong ski length.

Out of the prequalified jumpers, Taku Takeuchi showed the farthest jump of 100.5m, followed by Simon Ammann (99.5m) and Maciej Kot (98.5m).

And here’s the program for this weekend in Lillehammer:

Saturday, 7th December:

12:00 qualification of the ladies on the HS 100

12:45 trial round men on the HS 100

15:00 competition of the ladies on the HS 100

17:00 men’s competition on the HS 100

19:30 official training of the men on the HS 138

Sunday, 8th December

13:30 men’s qualification on the HS 138

15:00 competition of the men on the HS 138

• by Peggy Kierstan (@pikayartist)