Slovenia’s Anze Lanisek won the final qualification of the 2021/22 Ski Jumping season. On the HS 240 Letalnica hill in Planica (SLO), Lanisek came in ahead of his teammate Timi Zajc and Norway’s Johann Andre Forfang.
Slovenia remains a force in Ski Flying. After the successes on the past two weekends in Vikersund and Oberstdorf, the opening day of this winter’s third Ski Flying event was also dominated by two Slovenes, with Lanisek and Zajc. Peter Prevc, Lovro Kos, and Ziga Jelar completed their once again outstanding team result in sixth, seventh, and tenth. Two weeks ago, the Slovenian team had won the team title at the Ski Flying World Championships in Vikersund (NOR) in a fantastic manner.
The day at the Letalnica hill didn’t start well at all. The second training round had to be canceled after Austria’s Jan Hoerl almost crashed and the qualification could also not start as planned at 11 am. The bright sunshine caused problems with the inrun track, it was not possible to carry out the round and so the jury decided to postpone the start to 3 pm.
This decision proved to be correct: Everything went smoothly at 3 pm and the Slovenes could demonstrate their great Ski Flying skills in front of 10000 enthusiastic fans.
Besides the Slovenes, Kamil Stoch and Dawid Kubacki could also show convincing performances in fourth and fifth. Ski Flying World Cup leader Stefan Kraft of Austria (tied for first in this ranking with Slovenia’s Timi Zajc) came in ninth and will have to jump better tomorrow if he wants to keep up with Zajc in the battle for the small crystal globe.
The race for the overall World Cup title remains exciting as well: Ryoyu Kobayashi was eleventh, Karl Geiger 17th. The two top athletes were only separated by 5.8 points in today’s qualification. A similar result tomorrow would bring Kobayashi a big step closer to winning the title. Geiger has to give his all if he wants to keep it open until the final competition on Sunday. Every place that Geiger is ahead of Kobayashi would be extremely valuable for him, on the other hand, if Kobayashi comes in ahead of Geiger he will almost certainly win the overall title.
The competition on Friday starts at 2 pm CET.
