Jacqueline Seifriedsbeger wins second competition in Sapporo
With the second individual competition in Sapporo, the first World Cup weekend of the ladies' trip to Japan has come to an end. After she ranked second yesterday, Jacqueline Seifriedsberger from Austria managed to stand on top of the podium today. Anette Sagen from Norway and Sarah Hendrickson from USA finished on the second and third place.
After there has only been one competition round on the previous day, also for today's competition the weather forecast was not that promising. The trial round, however, could be carried out as scheduled and was followed by the first round with a delay of 20 minutes, but without any problems. During the final round the athletes had to be patient again and handle the breaks due to the wind conditions, but this round could be finished as well.
In the presence of many spectators, Jacqueline Seifriedsberger earned a well-deserved victory after jumps of 94 and 93 m (245,7 points). "That was a really good weekend for me. All in all it was not always easy to handle those conditions and we all had to be patient. But I am so happy that I even managed to improve after yesterday's good result and to win this competition. Of course I will do my best also in Zao next week", the winner from Austria sumed up. For Seifriedsberger it was the first World Cup victory of her career.
The second place was taken by Anette Sagen from Norway who moved up from the 3rd to the 2nd place compared to yesterday's competition. After having jumped on 93 m in the first round, she ranked 3rd behind Seifriedsberger and Hendrickson, but was able to beat the US athlete with today's longest jump of 99 m in the final round (241 points). "Who would have thought that I'll have such a successful weekend in Sapporo. Usually I am not coping very well with the time difference here in Japan, this year, however, everything has been working out really well for me. Today I jumped a lot better than on the days before and the jury did a good job once again. Many thanks also to the forejumpers, they did an excellent job", Sagen said.
Also Sarah Hendrickson was very happy about her result today. After she failed to win a medal at the Junior World Championships in Liberec, she quickly got over it and showed a good performance in Sapporo. "Also today it was not that easy to handle the wind conditons. Of course we want to compete and preferably with two rounds. It's kind of hard to stand on the top and have to wait for a long time, but that's ski jumping and we need to deal with it. I am happy with my result today and satisfied with the whole weekend. Now I am pretty excited for Zao", Hendrickson said after jumps of 93,5 and 87,5 m (240,2 points).
Slovenians achieve good team result once again
Like yesterday, with Spela Rogelj another Slovenian girl missed out on a top three finish and ranked fourth ahead of local hero Sara Takanashi who shared the fifth place with yesterday's winner Coline Mattel (FRA). Takanashi wanted to show a good performance in front of her home crowd after she had finished on the 12th place at the first competition. She jumped on 86 m in the first round what meant the 9th place by then. In the final round she reached the same distance and ended up 5th. Ursa Bogataj (SLO), Lindsey Van (USA), Carina Vogt (GER) and Katja Pozun (SLO) completed the result of today's top ten. The current Junior World Champions from Slovenia achieved a good team result once more.
In the World Cup overall ranking Sara Takanashi is still in the lead wih a total of 737 points, followed by Sarah Hendrickson (597 points) who managed to get back to the second place. Coline Mattel ranks third (593 points).