Kobayashi ahead of Huber and Paschke

Japan’s Ryoyu Kobayashi won the first qualification in Ruka (FIN) on Friday evening. With an amazing jump of 147 m (168.6 points), Kobayashi came in ahead of Austria’s Daniel Huber (141.5 m; 160.0 points) and Germany’s Pius Paschke (138.5 m; 154.7 points).

In freezing -17°C and perfect wind conditions, Kobayashi’s great jump earned him a lead of 8.6 points over second-placed Huber and this performance now makes him the top favorite for the two competitions near the Arctic Circle on Saturday and Sunday.

The surprise of the day was provided by Norway’s Halvor Egner Granerud, who will not be able to compete on Saturday after he landed already at 111.5 m. Granerud, who won a competition in Nizhny Tagil (RUS) last weekend, was already struggling in training today and didn’t do well on the HS 142 Rukatunturi-hill in Ruka. This is definitely a huge setback for last winter’s overall World Cup champion. 

The World Cup leader Karl Geiger was good as usual and finished sixth, his teammate Markus Eisenbichler also qualified easily for Saturday’s competition in eighth today. Besides Daniel Huber, Stefan Kraft (5th) and Jan Hoerl (7th) also achieved Top 10 results for Austria.

A total of 76 athletes were participating today, and besides every German, every Swiss, and every Austrian jumper, also all five Russians made the cut for the competition – strong. Valentin Foubert of France and Turkey’s Fatih Arda Ipcioglu could qualify for the competition as well.

The competition on Saturday will start at 4:30 pm CET. 

Full results