Kos wins ahead of Wellinger and Kobayashi

Lovro Kos from Slovenia celebrated his second World Cup victory in Lahti (FIN) on Friday. After his first victory in Lake Placid (USA) three weeks ago, the 24-year-old achieved his second success in Lahti today.
Friday’s competition was added to the calendar as a replacement for the competition in Szczyrk (POL), which had been canceled.
“My second jump today was outstanding, it feels incredibly good to win here. The conditions were really difficult, but today I had the conditions on my side,” explained Kos, who was able to move up 6 places in the overall World Cup thanks to his success and is now in 5th place.
The leader in the overall World Cup, Austria’s Stefan Kraft, on the other hand, had a pitch-black day: for Kraft, after a jump of 105 meters and 49th place, the competition was already over after the first round. “It’s hard to describe, I’ll have to take a look at what happened in the evening. That’s really bitter. It felt like crosswind after the take off, I couldn’t get a flight system and then that happens very quickly in ski jumping,” Kraft was perplexed after his jump.

Due to Kraft’s 0-point competition, Ryoyu Kobayashi (3rd place today) and Andreas Wellinger (2nd place today), Kraft’s closest pursuers, were able to make up important points in the battle for the overall World Cup. 
“The second jump was really good, it was exactly the improvement in the jump that I had hoped for. At first, I couldn’t even estimate the jump because it was really difficult, but when I saw the points, I knew it was right,” said Andreas Wellinger.
After today’s competition, Stefan Kraft leads the overall World Cup with 1546 points ahead of Ryoyu Kobayashi (1337 points) and Andreas Wellinger (1258 points).

The Norwegian Marius Lindvik finished in fourth place in the daily ranking after leading at half-time, followed by Jan Hoerl, Johann Andre Forfang and Daniel Tschofenig in places 5-7.
Poland’s Aleksander Zniszczol, Norway’s Kristoffer Eriksen Sundal and Stephan Embacher from Austria followed in places 8-10. With his 10th place, Embacher also secured his ticket for the start in the team competition on Saturday.

Noriaki Kasai competes on Saturday 
Although 51-year-old Japanese athlete Noriaki Kasai managed to qualify for the competition, he had to be satisfied with 38th place. However, legend Kasai can look forward to competing in the team competition on Saturday. Japan coach Sakuyama nominated Kasai as the fourth man in starting position two in the Japanese team.

The team competition starts on Saturday at 16:15 CET (17:15 LOC).