. world ski news : Polish team strong in front of home crowd - 21 July 2011 - 22:15
SKI JUMPING. And the Poland-Tour continues. On Wednesday the athletes competed on the new facility in Szczyrk, and already on Thursday the qualification for the individual competition in Zakopane was held.
And a local hero was the best in the center of Polish ski sports. Krzysztof Mietus won the qualificaiton for Saturday's competition on the Wielka-Krokiew-Hill with a jump on 129.5 m (131.2 points). first a team event will take place under floodlight on Friday (8:30 pm CET, trail round at 7:30 pm live on fisskijumping.com).
Poland, Czech Republic and Germany strong
Behind 20-year-old Mietus, Lukas Hlava, who won the qualification in Wisla, finished second with 129.4 points. He jumped one meter short of the winner, but he prevented a double victory for Poland. Because Maciej Kot, who already showed a good performance in training, came in third. The retirement of Adam Malysz was compensated well by the Polish team so far.
The second best Czech was Jacub Janda as fourth and with Barlomiej Klusek (5th) another young Pole was in the Top Ten. But also the German team will be satisfied with this qualification because they also had three athletes in among the best ten: Stephan Hocke (6th), Martin Schmitt (7th) and Maximilian Mechler (10th). The prequalified Richard Freitag showed the longest jump of the round with 131.5 m.
Morgenstern and Schlierenzauer not at the hill
The two top stars Thomas Morgenstern and Gregor Schlierenzauer took a day off and allowed the competition to jump to the top. Also the strong Russian Pavel Karelin and Poland's Kamil Stoch did not jump in the qualification. Simon Ammann and Matti Hautamaeki will not take part in Poland, just like last year's overall winner Daiki Ito from Japan.
Only seven jumpers could not qualify for the competition. The most famous name among those who failed to make the cut was Dimitri Ipatov from Russia. Pascal Bodmer closely qualified as 40th. He was also not in shape in the previous competition and is still struggeling with his jumps.
The final of the Poland-Tour will take place on Saturday at 5:00 pm CET in Zakopane.
FISskijumping.com
21.07.2011 19:59