Six days after his second place at the Four Hills Tournament, Andreas Wellinger also shone at the start of the Ski Jumping World Cup in Wisla, Poland.
In the qualification for the individual jumping of the new PolSKI tour on Sunday (January 14, 2024), Wellinger came second again with 130.5 meters. Only the Slovenian Anze Lanisek was better, who clearly came out on top with the day’s best distance of 134.5 meters. Tour winner Ryoyu Kobayashi came in eighth place, ahead of him was World Cup leader Stefan Kraft in seventh.
The second best German was Stephan Leyhe in a strong sixth place. Constantin Schmid, who returned to the World Cup team after good performances, came in 19th, Philipp Raimund in 26th. Pius Paschke in 33rd and Karl Geiger in 34th continued their mixed performances on the tour.
First Wisla, then Szczyrk and Zakopane
On Saturday there will be a “Super Team” competition in Wisla, i.e. a team competition with only two jumpers per team. The Poland tour will continue with an individual competition in Szczyrk the following Wednesday (January 17th, 2024) and finally two competitions (team and individual) in Zakopane (January 20th/21st).
The format is completely new. For the tour ranking, the points of the best two athletes in a nation are added together for each competition and qualification, so in the end one team wins.