Team Norway soars to gold in Planica
Dec 13, 2020·Ski Jumping
The Ski Flying World Championships in Planica (SLO) ended on Sunday with a fantastic team competition. Like on Saturday, the extremely exciting competition was not decided before the very last jump. But this time, the outstanding Norwegian Halvor Egner Granerud and his team finished on top. Karl Geiger and the German team came in second, followed by the team of Poland.
Daniel Andre Tande, Johann Andre Forfang, Robert Johansson, and Halvor Egner Granerud claimed already the fifth team title in Ski Flying for Norway. The Norwegian also won the team competition at the Ski Flying World Championships in 2016 and 2018.
In the end, Halvor Egner Granerud secured the win for his team. The silver-medalist of the individual event scored by far the most points today. With 488.4 points he was first in an individual ranking, followed by Karl Geiger (456.7 points) and Markus Eisenbichler (453.9 points).
With the exception of Johann Andre Forfang, every Norwegian showed a top performance and so a weaker jump of Forfang in the final round didn't really matter. "I haven't been sleeping that well in the past few nights because the other guys were jumping really well and I wasn't. So I was a bit stressed before today. In the first round, I did well, in the second round unfortunately not. But we are the World Champions, and that's what matters", Johann Andre Forfang said after the competition.
"We had the chance to win, but this time we didn't, maybe we will next time", said Constantin Schmid, the youngster in the German team. There's a smile under my mask. This is my first medal ever and that's a big achievement for me personally", he added. Constantin Schmid, Pius Paschke, Markus Eisenbichler, and Karl Geiger made it an exciting fight with the Norwegians until Granerud decided it with his outstanding final jump.
The third place went to the team of Poland: "Of course I'm really proud about winning a medal. I'm not that satisfied with my jumps, I wanted to jump much better here, but I have been struggling with my back since the first day here in Planica. I want to thank my teammates because they did a great job today", said Dawid Kubacki.
With the fourth place for the Slovenian team of coach Robert Hrgota, the Championships ended on a positive note for the hosts, even if the medal they had hoped for was not within reach today. Anze Lanisek was finally able to show his potential and had a very strong competition.
Japan, Austria, Russia, and Finland followed on the places 5 to 8. Because Stefan Kraft was not able to compete due to back problems and due to the recent Covid-19 infections, the team of Austria had no real chance to achieve a top result today.
The World Cup continues for the ski jumpers next weekend in Engelberg (SUI).
