Two individual competitions in Klingenthal will be held this weekend for the ski jumpers competing in the World Cup. After the poor performance of the Polish team at the beginning of the season, the coaching staff decided that only four athletes will compete in Germany.
While after the World Cup weekends in Nizhny Tagil and Ruka there was peace in the camp of the red-whites, the poor results in Wisla also forced them to take action. On Adam Małysz’s home ground the Poles came in fourth in the team competition and the individual event, the best Pole was Kamil Stoch, who finished 11th. As a result, only Stoch, Piotr Zyla, Aleksander Zniszczol and Pawel Wasek went to Klingenthal.
Dawid Kubacki, World Champion 2019 and winner of the 4-Hills-Tournament 2020, Jakub Wolny, Andrzej Stękała and Klemens Murańka will train in Ramsau, Austria.
Klingenthal is not the most popular venue on the World Cup calendar. So far, 18 competitions have been held there and Poles have won four of them.
It was there in December 2016 that they triumphed for the first time in the team competition. The 2016/17 season was the first for the white and red under Austrian coach Stefan Horngacher. After a mediocre start in Finland, they surprised everyone in Klingenthal.
They repeated this success three years later. Previously, Stoch (2011) and Krzysztof Biegun (2013) won individually one round each, as the second round was cancelled due to bad weather conditions. Adam Malysz was third in 2007 and second in 2010.
Last year Stoch enjoyed second place there, with Halvor Egner Granerud winning both competitions. The defending champion of the Crystal Ball has had a problem with stabilizing his form so far and it will be difficult for him to repeat such a result.
Now the favourite is Karl Geiger. The German never finished lower than fifth in any of the five competitions; he had one victory, came in second twice.
Geiger leads in the overall World Cup ranking. He is 83 points ahead of second-placed Slovene Anze Lanisko. Stoch came in 12th.
In the Nation’s Cup, the leader Germany is 231 points ahead of Austria. Poland is only sixth.