Austria secures sixth World Junior Team title in-a-row

Austria continued their recent domination of the Men’s Junior Team Normal Hill by claiming their sixth successive victory in the discipline at the FIS Nordic Junior World Ski Championships in Lillehammer (NOR).

Despite being denied the talents of record-breaking Olympic champion Stephan Embacher (AUT), who claimed his third World Junior title in-a-row on Thursday, the four-strong squad held off a strong challenge from their German rivals to top the podium.

The line-up of Lukas Haagen, Nikolaus Humml, Julian Auinger and Thomas Gfrerer attained an overall score of 1047.9 points from their total of eight jumps.

“It’s really cool to be on the top today,” Humml told FIS. “We were probably the favourites before the competition and you have to cope with the pressure, but we’re a good team and help one another out.

“There’s a great vibe between us all in the hotel, which makes it all fun and great to be part of this team. I didn’t bring my best jumps in the individual competition which really hurt me, but to show that I can still do it today, with the team, is really awesome.”

Germany had threatened to overall the Austrians ahead of the final jump, but the team of Alex Reiter, Lasse Deimel, Yann Kullmann and Janne Holz would ultimately score 1034.4pts to place second.

“It was a nice competition and although I wasn’t quite satisfied with my first jump (93m), my second (98.5m) was really good,” said Kullmann.

“I didn’t expect it (silver), but the whole team was just setup great and it was a really good competition, so I would say that overall it was just awesome.”

The battle for bronze was played out, in highly entertaining style, between hosts Norway and Slovenia, who ranked second in the ski jumping medal table at the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games last month. 

To the delight of home-nation fans it was the line-up of Oddvar Gunneroed, Odd Harald Svenningsen-Fjeld, Jakob Alvsaaker Walseth and Leonard Fageraas, who would claim the final podium place.

They attained a total of 989.2 points, which was 7.9pts more than Slovenia’s men attained.

“It was a fun competition and we had maybe dreamed of it (the medal), but we didn’t know if it was possible,” WALSETH told FIS.

“Not everyone has the chance to win a medal (in their home country) so it was very cool t be able to do that and we’re obviously all very happy.” 

The Ski Jumping programme at Lillehammer 2026 will conclude with the Mixed Team competition at 09:00 (CET) on Sunday.