Historical qualifications for Polish ski jumpers in Willingen. Record broken after 16 years

This weekend, February 3-4, the ski jumpers will return to compete in the World Cup competitions. After the flights to Kulm in Bad Mitterndorf, it’s time for Germany, specifically Willingen. Muehlenkopfschanze is considered the largest normal hill in the world, and its size is as much as 147 meters. However, jumpers regularly exceed 150 meters, which is rare on normal hills. The first jumper in history who crossed this magical limit was Adam Małysz – 151.5 meters in 2001.

The record at Willingen belonged to Adam Małysz. Four years later, Janne Ahonen turned out to be better

In 2001, Adam Małysz dominated the competition on the hill in Willingen. The current president of the Polish Ski Association won only one of the two World Cup competitions at that time, but the distances he achieved at that time were staggering. During the first competition, the Pole jumped 142 meters, and on the second day he broke the hill record, landing at 151.5 meters.

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The new Muehlenkopfschanze record holder in 2005, however, was Janne Ahonen. The legendary Finn jumped half a meter further from the Pole, reaching a distance of 152 meters. For nine years he was an independent hill record holder, but in January 2014 his result was repeated by Slovene Jurij Tepes.

Klemens Muranka is the current hill record holder in Willingen.

And now we come to the legendary qualifications for Poland in Willingen from the end of January 2021. The strength of the Polish team was – as always – Kamil Stoch, Dawid Kubacki and Piotr Żyła. The former won the 4-Hills-Tournament and finally finished third in the World Cup. Andrzej Stęka³a and Klemens Murańka were the backbone of the Polish team and they were the heroes of these qualifications.

First jumped Murańka, who soared to 153 meters and after 16 years broke the hill record. However, this did not give him a victory in qualifying. He finished only fifth with minus points for downwind and poor marks for style after a two-legged landing.

Several minutes later Andrzej Stękała landed on the beam and made a phenomenal jump of 152 meters. He was also blown away (-22.6 for the wind against the skis), but it gave him the victory. The second was Halvor Egner Granerud, who jumped only 139.5 meters. He was unlucky because he was one of the few who jumped in relatively bad conditions (-7.3 for wind). The lead had 15 to 23 points deducted.

This is not the end of Poles’ successes. In the end, there were as many as four Poles in the top seven of the qualifications. In addition to the above-mentioned two, Kubacki was sixth and Żyła was seventh.

The results from the qualifications did not have such an impact on the competition. Stoch was third, Kubacki – fifth. The qualifier heroes failed. Stękała took 20th place, and Murańka only 32nd.

This year’s men’s individual competition in Willingen is scheduled for Saturday (16.10) and Sunday (16.00). Six representatives of Poland will take part in them: Dawid Kubacki, Piotr Żyła, Kamil Stoch, Aleksander Zniszczoł, Jakub Wolny and Paweł Wąsek. Coverage from the weekend competitions of the World Cup live on Sport.pl and in the Sport.pl LIVE application.