Double World Champion Stefan Kraft achieved his best result of the season so far on Saturday in Nischnij Tagil in fifth place. The rest of the ÖSV team disappointed heavily in Russia, with Daniel Huber in 24th place only another Austrian made World Cup points. Norwegian Johann Andre Forfang won 0.2 points ahead of Piotr Zyla (Poland) and 2.4 points ahead of World Cup leader Ryoyu Kobayashi (Japan).
While Kraft, behind the German Stephan Leyhe and 11.6 points behind him in third place, achieved his first single-digit result of the World Championships winter, Gregor Schlierenzauer (34th) and Philipp Aschenwald (39th) were only spectators in the second round. Clemens Aigner and Manuel Fettner had even finished in the qualification. Michael Hayböck, who was completely out of shape at last, is not present in the Urals, where another competition follows on Sunday.
ÖSV ski jumping boss Mario Stecher stated in an ORF interview in Lillehammer that the majority of the team was in great need of catching up. “This is not what the ÖSV is capable of delivering. We’re really far away. The package is no longer completely coherent with one or the other,” says Stecher. The only thing he was satisfied with was strength. “He’s got confidence in himself, that gives me confidence.”
For the rest, “If you have no strengths at the moment, you must eliminate the weaknesses. We must reach for the ceiling and approach in training. I hope that it will go on step by step and that self-confidence will develop,” said Stecher, speaking of a big challenge in order to be able to catch up again until the tour. In Hayböck’s example, this means: “He has to let it run again, he has to bring the looseness back in, he has to find his entire system again in training.”