Berlin, Jan. 29 (BNA) Austria’s Marietta Kramer continued her dominance of the women’s ski jumping season by winning the World Cup in Willingen on Saturday in an event that was halted after one round due to the weather.
Japan’s Four Hills Champion Ryo Kobayashi claimed the men’s event won under similar conditions after just one round of jumps.
Organizers canceled the second rounds of the big hill jumps due to the high winds that drove Kramer to her sixth season win and 14th overall with a jump of 123.5 metres, German news agency dpa reported.
That earned her 80.2 points and with it the win despite local student Katarina Althaus jumping 126.5 meters for 77.1 and Emma Klinik of Slovenia jumping 127 meters for 72.0.
Dutch-born 20-year-old Kramer is a strong contender for gold at the Winter Olympics that begin in Beijing on February 4.
Germany’s Selena Freitag suffered a hard landing, although she survived largely unharmed, but the men’s World Cup on strongman Willingen Mühlenkopfschanze, the oldest in the ring, started as scheduled.
Kobayashi scored his seventh victory this season, and regained the overall lead, with a jump of 145 meters, achieving 115.6 points.
Norwegian duo Halvor Aigner Granrod and Marius Lindvik completed the podium at 111.6 (143m) and 107.0 (137m) while former German leader Karl Geiger was only 20th after being unlucky with the wind.
However, there was a surprise on the second day of the Seefeld trilogy in the North combined when Norwegian star Jarl Magnus Reber, who won at the Austrian resort on Friday, finished only 10th.
Reaper has dominated the season other than coming off with a recent back injury and a tough ski jump, affected by the wind, that left him on the regular hill in 13th, a position he barely recovered from in the 10-kilometer cross-country race.
The victory went instead to Vincennes Geiger, who beat overall leader Johannes Lamparter of Austria by just 1.7 seconds in 24 minutes 49.3 seconds.
Another Norwegian, Jürgen Graback, came third with Estonian Christian Ilves only 12th despite starting the ski first after she topped the jump.
The Seefeld triathlon concludes on Sunday with a regular 12.5km hill race while there are more men’s and women’s World Cups scheduled in Willingen.
insult