The third event of the FIS Ski Jumping World Cup was held this weekend in Titisee-Neustadt, Germany. The headline news for Slovene fans of the intrepid ski fliers is that on Saturday the team moved from fifth place to fourth, with 1011.5 points. The top three teams this weekend were Norway (1083.6), Poland (1082.8), and Germany (1054.7), with Austria (1010.9) in fifth place. Norway has won all three events so far this season, and so is the favourite going into next year’s Olympics, with the team competition held in PyeongChang on February 19.
The longest jump of the day on Saturday was achieved by Germany’s Richard Freitag, who flew 143.5 m in front of a rapturous home crowd. The top Slovene of the day was again Jernej Damjan, who managed 133.5 m. A PDF of all the results of the team competition can be found here, with some of day’s action shown below.
Turning to Sunday’s individual competition, the last event, in Ruka, Finland, was won by Slovenia’s Damjan, who this week had to make do with ninth place and a jump of 129.5 m, ceding the top position on the podium to Richard Freitag (GER), who managed 145.0 m and 128.4 points, the longest flight of the weekend. On a day when bad weather meant the first round was cancelled, the top five was filled out by Andreas Wellinger (GER, 139.5 m, 126.0), Daniel Andre Tande (NOR, 135.5 m, 122.5), Junshiro Kobayashi (JAP, 137.5 m, 120.9), and Robert Johansson (NOR, 130.5 , 119.1).
With regard to the rest of the Slovenes, Peter Prevc came in 15th (129.0 m, 104.4), Anze Semenic 17th (124.5 m, 102.1) and Tilen Bartol 36th (109.0 m 73.5). Veteran jumper and perennial crowd favourite Noriaki Kasai, of Japan, came in tenth with a jump of 130 m.
