Just hours after the first individual competition, the historic first duo competition took place at the American Lake Placid, in which thirteen teams competed for Nations Cup points. By decision of coach Thomas Thurnbichler, Poland was represented by the two best players of the World Cup – Piotr Żyła and Dawid Kubacki.
A historic duo competition for Poland! Żyła and Kubacki gave their rivals no chance
In the first series of competitions, the Austrians were definitely the best – Daniel Tschofenig with a jump of 127 meters definitely won the first group of jumpers, and Stefan Kraft achieved the best distance – 130.5 meters.
This resulted in an 11.1 point advantage over the Polish second team, as Piotr Żyła and Dawid Kubacki also showed their good side, jumping 123.5 and 128 meters respectively. The Japanese with Ryoyu Kobayashi (124.5m) had a few points less, and the Germans with the fantastic Andreas Wellinger (127.5m) on Saturday.
The Norwegians were a little disappointed by Halvor Egner Granerud, who only reached 120.5 meters, which meant that after the first jumps they were more than 30 points behind the Austrian leader. The only team that did not qualify for the second round was Romania, in thirteenth place.
While in the second round the Poles were able to maintain their very good level, as Piotr Żyła jumped 122.5 meters and Dawid Kubacki 127 meters, their most dangerous rivals could not.
Daniel Tschofenig (115.5m) and Stefan Kraft (117m) jumped several meters less than in the first round, which dropped Austria to fourth place. Second place was taken by the Germans, thanks to an excellent jump in difficult conditions by Andreas Wellinger (125m), who lost more than 11 points against Poland.
In addition to Austria and Germany, equal Japan also counted in the fight for the podium. After the jumps of Nakamura (125.5m) and Kobayashi (122m), the Asians are third, 15.8 from the leader.
In the second series, the performances of Italy (9th), Estonia (10th), the United States (11th) and Kazakhstan (12th) completed their performances.
The White-Reds had absolutely no intention of letting go of their advantage. Moreover, Piotr Żyła, trained in the third round, made the farthest jump of his group, reaching up to 127.5 meters, which allowed the Poles to jump more than 15 points over their rivals.
As for the last group of jumpers, the wind picked up over the hill in Lake Placid and caused several breaks. Despite this, the jumps from the leaders were impressive – Graneruda’s 129 yards, Kobayashi’s 128 and Kraft’s 128.5 caused a lot of shuffling in the lead. Kraft promoted their Austria to second place, Kobayashi Japan to third, and the big losers were Germany, who fell from the podium with a 122-metre jump from Wellinger.
Only one thing has not changed – the Poles who won this competition remained in first place. After a jump of 127 meters from Dawid Kubacki, the Whites and Reds won in good style, with an advantage of 13.2 points over Austria and 24.1 points over Japan.
The next duo competition will take place in a week in Rasnov, Romania, while an individual competition is scheduled for Sunday in Lake Placid, which will start at 4:15 p.m. Polish time. Qualifying will take place at 2:45 p.m. Live coverage on Sport.pl.
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