Richard Freitag barely missed the podium at the start of the season in Wisla, Poland. The 26-year-old was in the lead after the first round, but had to make do with fourth place after flights of 126.0 and 120.0 m. He was able to reach the fourth place. Newcomer Junshiro Kobayashi from Japan celebrated his first victory in front of local hero Kamil Stoch and double world champion Stefan Kraft.
“That’s really nice. I did a good job in autumn and I’m happy to finally take this directly into the winter”, said Freitag, who ended up missing four meters to the podium on ZDF. Since his success at the Vierschanzentrournee show jumping competition in Innsbruck on Friday, Friday, 4. January 2015 to a victory.
National coach Werner Schuster was also full of praise:”The competition was first-class. That was a great start for him, he did a great job the whole weekend,”said the Austrian:”Richard has a good chance of returning to his old form. And then he’s on fire.”
In the absence of the injured former world champion Severin Freund, the DSV eagles were particularly convincing in their breadth. Highly traded vice world champion Andreas Wellinger finished ninth, closely followed by Stephan Leyhe and Pius Paschke in tenth and twelfth place. For Paschke, it was by far the best result of his career:”All in all, this was a good start,”said Schuster.
The World Cup third Markus Eisenbichler did not exceed rank 15, Karl Geiger and David Siegel also collected 17th and 23 World Cup points.
On the other hand, several prominent names got off to a bad start. Peter Prevc, who had searched in vain for his former top form last winter, did not reach the 20th place. He was still the best Slovenian. Japan’s former champions Noriaki Kasai (45), the four-time Olympic champion Simon Ammann (Switzerland) and the Czech Roman Koudelka did not make it into the second round at all.
In the team jumping competition on Saturday Wellinger, Eisenbichler, Freitag and Leyhe finished fourth. The victory went to Norway ahead of the equal-point teams from Poland and Austria. Next weekend we will continue with two competitions in Kuusamo, Finland.