Halvor Egner Granerud just keeps on winning
Feb 06, 2021·Ski Jumping
Halvor Egner Granerud won the first of two Ski Jumping World Cups in Klingenthal. In the sleet in the Vogtland-Arena, the Norwegian came in ahead of Poland's Kamil Stoch and Bor Pavlovcic of Slovenia.
The great shape and the winning streak of Norway's Halvor Egner Granerud are incredible. It seems easy for the 24-year-old to win one World Cup after the other. In Klingenthal, Granerud took his third win in a row, the ninth this winter.
And just like in the recent competitions, Granerud scored a lot more points than his main opponents: On Saturday he had a lead of 12.6 points over Kamil Stoch. I'm quite satisfied and I'm happy with the way I managed to adapt to the stressful situation in the first round when I had to get off the gate and was told that there will be a trial jumper, but then there was no trial jumper. So I'm happy that I was able to calm myself down. The final jump was really good and jumps like that are so much fun. It was a really good day for me. My jumps are really good right now and I'll just try to do the same tomorrow", said the happy winner.
Kamil Stoch was also satisfied with his second place: "I'm satisfied with my jumps today. Yesterday I was struggling with some small details and sometimes it can be really difficult to find this one small piece that's missing. Today everything went well and actually I was a bit surprised by the result. It was a good competition, not only for me but for the whole Polish team." Stoch's teammates Piotr Zyla and Dawid Kubacki were also among the very best today in fourth and sixth.
The third place of Slovenia's Bor Pavlovcic was his first-ever World Cup podium, but after the recent performances of the 22-year-old in Willingen and in yesterday's training and prologue, it didn't come as a surprise. "It's my first podium and it feels amazing. I was jumping well already last weekend and yesterday, so I knew that I can be on the podium if I make good jumps and that's what happened. I hope I can make two jumps like the second one today in tomorrow's competition then I can achieve a good result again", he told after the competition.
The best German today was Pius Paschke in seventh, Severin Freund and Karl Geiger failed to make the cut for the second round in 31st and 32nd. The best athlete of Austria was Philipp Aschenwald in 16th, Thomas Lackner and Stefan Kraft finished 18th and 19th.
Halvor Egner Granerud now leads the overall World Cup with 1306 points, followed by Markus Eisenbichler (917 points) and Kamil Stoch (805 points).
In his current shape and with a lead of almost 400 points, Granerud can slowly start to prepare for achieving his goal of winning the overall World Cup title, even if there are still 10 individual World Cups on the calendar this season. Right now, Granerud seems to be unbeatable.
The second World Cup competition in Klingenthal starts on Sunday at 2:30 pm CET.
