Just a few hours after the first individual competition, the historic first duos competition was held in the American Lake Placid, in which thirteen teams competed for points to the Nations Cup. By the decision of coach Thomas Thurnbichler, Poland was represented by the two best players in the World Cup – Piotr Żyła and Dawid Kubacki.
A historic duo competition for Poland! Żyła and Kubacki did not give their rivals a chance
In the first competition series, the Austrians were definitely the best – Daniel Tschofenig with a jump of 127 meters definitely won the first group of jumpers, and Stefan Kraft achieved the best distance – 130.5 meters.
This translated into an advantage of 11.1 points over the second Poland, because Piotr Żyła and Dawid Kubacki also showed their good side, jumping respectively 123.5 and 128 meters. The Japanese with Ryoyu Kobayashi (124.5 m) had a few points less, as well as the Germans with the fantastic Andreas Wellinger (127.5 m) on Saturday.
The Norwegians were a bit disappointed with Halvor Egner Granerud, who reached only 120.5 meters, which meant that after the first jumps they were more than 30 points behind the leader Austria. The only team that did not advance to the second round was thirteenth-placed Romania.
While in the second round the Poles were able to maintain their very good level, because Piotr Żyła jumped 122.5 meters, and Dawid Kubacki 127 meters, their most dangerous rivals could not do it.
Daniel Tschofenig (115.5 m) and Stefan Kraft (117 m) jumped several meters shorter than in the first round, which dropped Austria to fourth place. The second place was taken by the Germans, thanks to the excellent jump in difficult conditions of Andreas Wellinger (125 m), who lost over 11 points to Poland.
In addition to Austria and Germany, equal Japan also mattered in the fight for the podium. After the jumps of Nakamura (125.5 m) and Kobayashi (122 m), the Asians were third, 15.8 behind the leader.
In the second series, the representations of Italy (9th), Estonia (10th), USA (11th) and Kazakhstan (12th) finished their performances.
The White-Reds absolutely had no intention of letting go of their advantage. Not only that, the driven Piotr Żyła in the third round made the farthest jump in his group, reaching as much as 127.5 meters, which allowed the Poles to jump over 15 points from their rivals.
When it came to the last group of jumpers, the wind picked up over the hill at Lake Placid and caused several breaks. Despite this, the jumps of the leaders were impressive – Graneruda’s 129 meters, Kobayashi’s 128 and Kraft’s 128.5 caused a lot of reshuffling in the lead. Kraft moved his Austria to second place, Kobayashi Japan to third, and the big losers were Germany, who fell off the podium with Wellinger’s jump of 122 meters.
Only one thing has not changed – Poles who won this competition remained in the first place. After a 127-meter jump by Dawid Kubacki, the White-and-Reds won in a beautiful style, with an advantage of 13.2 points over Austria and 24.1 points over Japan.
The next duos competition will take place in a week in Rasnov, Romania, while an individual competition is scheduled for Sunday in Lake Placid, which will start at 16:15 Polish time. Qualifying will take place at 2:45 p.m. Live coverage on Sport.pl.
Source: Sport.PL
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