After a 33-year break, the Ski Jumping World Cup returned to the American Lake Placid, and after a 19-year break to the United States. In Lake Placid the Polish jumpers hoped to improve after an average weekend in Willingen. Only Kamil Stoch, who was looking for form, did not fly to the USA, and coach Thomas Thurnbichler took the best Polish players with him.
Andreas Wellinger the best in Lake Placid. Kubacki fifth, Graneruda series interrupted
Unfortunately, the first series already showed that it will be extremely difficult to repeat the result of the qualification, where as many as three Poles were in the top ten. Tomasz Pilch, tenth in the qualifications, did not advance to the second round, he was only 41st after a jump of 108 meters. Paweł Wąsek, 36th after a jump of 111 meters, did not make it to the “30”.
On the other hand, Aleksander Zniszczoł was a positive surprise, with a jump of 118.5 meters that allowed him to take thirteenth place at the halfway point of the competition.
The clear leader after the first round was the Japanese Ryoyu Kobayashi, who broke the hill record with a jump of 136 meters. After that, the conditions deteriorated, and since there was also a “dance with beams” performed by the competition jury, the best players from the World Cup classification were not able to jump to the top.
Even world dominating Halvor Egner Granerud was sixth with 124.5 meters. Of the others, only Dawid Kubacki fared well, placing tenth after the attempt at 119.5 meters. Piotr Żyła (114.5 meters, 17th place), Stefan Kraft and Anże Lanisek were unable to reach the construction point at 115 meters, and Manuel Fettner did not even manage to advance to the second round.
The second series is a big promotion for Dawid Kubacki. The 126-meter jump of the currently best Polish jumper allowed him to reach fifth place, even ahead of Halvor Egner Granerud, who after a jump of 117 meters was only seventh and interrupted his excellent series of 12 consecutive World Cup competitions on the podium.
Aleksander Zniszczoł maintained his very good thirteenth place, reaching 123 meters in the second round. Another average jump was made by Piotr Żyła – only 116.5 meters caused him to drop to 19th place.
Ryoyu Kobayashi couldn’t defend his big advantage after the first round. In the second round he had poor conditions and jumped only 114 meters. This prevented him from overtaking the German Andreas Wellinger, who jumped on 125.5 meters in the second round, thanks to which he moved up from fifth to first place. For Wellinger it was the first podium in 3.5 years and the first victory in over 5 years.
Kobayashi was second with a loss of 8.5 points, and the place on the lowest step of the podium went to Austrian Daniel Tschofenig (120 meters in the second round).
After Saturday’s competition in Lake Placid, the gap between Dawid Kubacki (1,323 points) and Halvor Egner Granerud (1,552 points) in the overall World Cup classification, which currently amounts to 229 points, slightly decreased. Piotr Żyła (816 points) remains fifth, and Kamil Stoch (423 points) dropped to twelfth position.
Even today, at 23:00 Polish time, the duet competition will take place, while the second individual competition is scheduled for Sunday, at 16:15.
Source: Sport.PL
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