The Polish ski jumpers took the win in the team competitions at the FIS Grand Prix opener. In front of their home crowd, Maciej Kot, Dawid Kubacki, Piotr Zyla and Kamil Stoch took a clear win ahead of Germany and World Champion Norway with their total of 1042.7 points.

The German team, with Andreas Wank, Stephan Leyhe, Richard Freitag and Andreas Wellinger, followed 42 points behind the winners. Norway, represented by Kenneth Gangnes, Johann Andre Forfang, Phillip Sjoeen and Anders Fannemel, came in third with 982.7 points.

Maciej Kot said afterwards: “We weren't very hospitable to our opponents today, but this is sport and there's no room to be sentimental. We are happy that we could show a good performance in front of our home crowd. Now we know that we are doing a good job, but it's only July and we have to focus on the winter as well."

Conditions are challenging

Andreas Wank told: “It's not very difficult to jump on this hill, but the wind conditions are challenging sometimes. The wind is changing a lot and this makes a big difference so you need some luck, but I really like this hill. I always enjoy being in Poland, it's very nice to start the summer season here. I also became Junior World Champion in Poland and so I have great memories.”

Norway's Anders Fannemel said: “Poland was very good today and Norway was far behind. Our goal was to have eight good jumps, to make progress and to fight for the podium. I like the hill here and also the city.”

Surprisingly strong Czech team

The fourth place surprisingly went to the Czech team (Lukas Hlava, Jakub Janda, Antonin Hajek and Roman Koudelka) with 955.0 points. 0.1 points behind, Austrian finished fifth. The places six to eight went to Slovenia, Finland and Japan. Switzerland, Russia, South Korea and Kazakhstan failed to qualify for the final round.

With the longest jump of the day by Dawid Kubacki on 133.5 m and very good jumps of Piotr Zyla on 131 m and Maciej Kot on 130.5 m, the Polish team could land beyond the 130 m mark three times. The best Austrian, Stefan Kraft, with 131 m and Andreas Wellinger, with 130 m, were the only two other athletes who jumped this far. Double Olympic Champion Kamil Stoch landed at 129.5 m in his best jump.

In absence of overall World Cup winner Severn Freund, the German team showed a good performance, only Richard Freitag could not live up to the expectations. World record holder Anders Fannemel and Kenneth Gangnes were the best of the Norwegians, while the Czech showed a good team performance.

No chance to win for Austria and Slovenia

The Austrians and Slovenes still have a lot of room for improvement, only Stefan Kraft presented himself in a strong shape already.

The Finnish team lost its change to achieve a better result due to a weaker performance of Harri Olli, the Japanese could not compensate the absence of Noriaki Kasai and Taku Takeuchi.

This summer's first individual competition follows on Saturday evening in Wisla.

Source: fis-ski.com