Team Austria defeats strong Poles in Zakopane

Team Austria defeats strong Poles in Zakopane

Austrian jumpers won Saturday's team competition in Zakopane (POL). In exciting competitions Daniel Huber, Philip Aschenwald, Michael Hayboeck and Jan Hoerl scored combined 991,2 points and overtook the Poles (982,3 pkt). Norway took third place 974,8 pkt.

Snowfall and changing winds ensured difficult conditions and an extremely exciting competition at Wielka Krokiew in Zakopane. The Poles looked like the clear winner, but Andrzej Stękała landed on 115 m in the second series, his direct rival Philipp Aschenwald jumped 18 m further in the third group and took the lead for Austria. After all, Austria did 8,9 advantage over Poland.

Michael Hayboeck was the first jumper of his Austrian team and showed a great distance jump 140,5 m, but soon the Poles took the lead. “This victory is incredibly enjoyable, we were losers in this contest, but today we pushed each other and that's what made the difference. Of course, we also had some luck, that Andrzej Stękała made a bad second jump", said Hayboeck after the surprise victory, which was the first Austrians in Zakopane.

Polish people (Piotr Zyla, Kamil Stoch, Andrzej Stekala and Dawid Kubacki) they kept the rivalry under control until losing the lead after the second jump of Stękała. The second place was taken by the players of coach Michał Dolezal, the level of competition was very high.

Japan and Slovenia battled for fourth place, finally the Slovenes overtook Japan by 11 points. German band with Markus Eisenbichler, by Karl Geiger, Severin Freund and Pius Paschke could not live up to the high expectations today and was only sixth. “We made too many mistakes today. This is a difficult situation for us, now we will analyze it and tomorrow we will do our best again” – coach Stefan Horngacher said after the winning competition.

The Finnish and Swiss teams were in seventh and eighth place, Italy could not qualify for the final round of the best eight teams, but they still had a great rivalry with the two youngsters Francesco Cecon and Daniel Moroder. At one point, they even had a chance to move on to a second series.

Poland currently leads the Nations Cup with 2748 points, followed by Norway (2680 points) and Germany (2186 points).
The individual competition in Zakopane will start on Sunday at 16:00.