Tepeš beats Prevc, Freund wins the World Cup in the race of the impossible

Call it thrilling, call it incredible, call it magic: no words can describe the 2014/15 season finale. It's the race of the impossible, where a Slovenian wins in Slovenia handing the World Cup out from another Slovenian to a German. Jurij Tepeš amazes the world by winning on Peter Prevc and Rune Velta, while Severin Freund gets the Crystal Globe despite an ex-aequo with his rival (1729 points for both, but most wins for Freund).

No film-maker could have concieved such a storyboard. Prevc led the first round with the German in seventh place; the Cup was therefore in his hands and the miracle seemed to have happened. Things got even easier when Freund dropped one position in the second round, but the table turned again: Tepeš set a 244m jump out of nowhere and rose from his fourth place to the top of the standings, making Pero's 233.5m second jump insufficent for the win. It's a bitter sweet win for Tepeš, who looked a bit disappointed for damaging his teammate, but crowned a stellar weekend with the result he deserved and his first ever jump over the 240m mark.

Velta closed the podium with an impressing third place and two jumps over the HS-point. Stefan Kraft is fourth ahead of Kamil Stoch and Michael Hayböck. Freund finished seventh after Gregor Schlierenzauer (9th) lost one place in the last round; between them, Noriaki Kasai, with Piotr Zyla on the edge of the top-10. The level of competition was, once again, extreme: all these athletes set two race jumps over 220m apart from Schlierenzauer (218m in the final round). Fannemel, Ito, Kranjec, Määttä and Forfang close the top-15 in this order. Stephan Leyhe was the only non-qualified athlete for the second round.

Edoardo Vercellesi (Twitter: @edoverce97)

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