Only his brother Domen and a fall can stop Peter Prevc
Santa Claus congratulates today's winner Domen Prevc
Great drama in the opening event of the Ski Jumping World Cup in Ruka, Finland. 17-year-old Domen Prevc of Slovenia won the first competition of the FIS World Cup 2016/17. The younger brother of superstar Peter Prevc benefited from a crash of his brother in the very last jump of the competition. The event was held under perfect weather conditions.
Jumps of 138.5 m and 140.5 m earned Domen Prevc a total of 321.8 points and his first win in the World Cup. But after outstanding jumps in yesterday's training in Ruka this was not really a big surprise.
"I think it was a really fair competition, there wasn't a lot of wind so we could make great jumps. I can't really tell why I was so strong hear today, I guess my coaches could maybe answer this question. Tomorrow is another day, we'll see if I can jump on the same level again", youngster Domen Prevc summed up his day at work.
The extremely strong result of Severin Freund came as more of a surprise. The runner-up of last season's overall World Cup finished second with two jumps of 140 m (318.3 points). Freund, who was forced to take a long break from jumping training due to an injury, showed a great performance and was surprised by the high level of his jumps in this winter's first competition:
"Honestly, this result is a bit of a surprise for me, because I didn't necessarily expect it after only so few training jumps. I think I benefited from the fact that I know what to do on this hill. Yesterday was very difficult for me, because when you return to competing after a long break it's more or less normal to be struggling a bit. That's why I'm even happier that it worked that well today. I know that Domen didn't have the best summer, but the profile of this hill suits him well. He really knows how to fly", Freund said about his very good start of the season.
Peter Prevc, who didn't jump that well in the training rounds on the HS 142 Rukatunturi-hill in Ruka on Thursday, intensively analyzed his jumps together with his coaches and this paid off in the competition. After the first round Peter Prevc was clearly in the lead with his outstanding jump on 143 m. Only a crash right after the landing of his second jump prevented his first win this season. Fortunately it seems that he didn't suffer any serious injuries and got away with some bruises.
"Right now I'm okay, but the body is still full of adrenaline. But if I can walk and talk there is no big problem. Yesterday I made my first jumps on snow, so I had to adjust to the conditions and to the hill. We then analyzed the jumps together with the coaches and made some changes in the inrun position and this worked out really well. After seeing how Domen jumped yesterday I knew that he is capable of achieving a really good result. His last training jumps in Kranj were also really impressive. I'm really happy that he could jump that well also in the competition", said Peter Prevc.
The fourth place went to strong Austrian Manuel Fettner. Fettner came in right ahead of Poland's Maciej Kot, who was one of the top favorites, and the two Germans Karl Geiger (6th) and Markus Eisenbichler (7th). Three members of the German team were in the Top 7 and so they can be very satisfied with the start of this winter season. Richard Freitag in 15th and David Siegel in 19th completed the good performances of the team of Werner Schuster.
The Austrian jumpers also presented themselves strong. Besides Fettner in fourth, Andreas Kofler (8th), Stefan Kraft (9th) and Michael Hayboeck (11th) jumped on a high level. Austrian head coach Heinz Kuttin will be satisfied with this opening event.
The second competition will take place on Saturday at 4:00 pm CET.
Full results and Cup Standings in our Results Database