dGerman ski jumpers took third place in a team competition held in Lahti, Finland, which was characterized by changing wind conditions. Andreas Wellinger, Stephan Leyhe, Pius Paschke and Philipp Raimund only had to admit defeat to the victorious Norwegians and Austria on Saturday for overall World Cup leader Stefan Kraft. For Germany it was the second third place in the second team competition with four jumpers per team in the winter. This time Raimund came into the team to replace Karl Geiger, who was in poor form.
“It is a turbulent competition. You need a little luck,” said Germany's top jumper, Wellinger, after his first attempt at 122 metres. ZDF. In the second round she landed after 127 meters. Paschke had also endured such a long sentence before.
“Good, but not very good,” was Wellinger's conclusion. “I think everyone left something somewhere.” National coach Stefan Horngacher thinks the same: “There were no big leaps, but it was solid.”
At the end of the World Cup weekend in northern Europe, this Sunday there is an individual competition (4:00 p.m. on Eurosport, second round also on ZDF). In the first individual test on Friday, Wellinger, third in the overall classification, came second, thus adding points to his rivals preceding him.
Successes in the Bobsleigh World Championship
BRC Thuringia's Lisa Buckwitz won her first World Championship gold as a bobsleigh rider. The former pusher, who surprisingly won Olympic gold with Mariama Jamanka in Pyeongchang 2018, beat Laura Nolte with Eintracht Frankfurt's Vanessa Mark by five hundredths of a second in Winterberg on Saturday.
The two-time Olympic champion from Beijing, who rode with Deborah Levi from Potsdam, missed her first World Cup double after her victory in the monobob. Third place went to defending champion Kim Kalicki from TuS Eintracht Wiesbaden with her Winterberg pusher Leonie Fiebig.
“The three of them had a great race and put pressure on,” national coach René Spies told ZDF: “Lisa and Vanessa are the deserved winners. Overall, it’s a great thing for us with those three.”
Monobob world champion Nolte was equally strong in start number one and broke the nine-year-old record set by former world champion Anja Schneiderheinze (56.54 seconds) in 55.93 seconds. Kalicki immediately increased it to 55.89 seconds. However, Kalicki made a small mistake in the second race and dropped to third place.
On the third pass, Buckwitz drove almost flawlessly and defended his lead with the fastest time, while Nolte made some mistakes on the track despite having the best starting time. In the fourth and final race, Kalicki and Nolte pushed with their respective records, but Buckwitz remained calm: “I knew it would be close at the end, but it was enough.”