Double victory for Sara Takanashi in Zao
During the last days in Zao (JPN) the wind conditions were not easy to handle for athletes and organizers as well. Changing wind conditions with strong gusts not only caused the cancellation of Friday's official training, but also forced the jury to postpone the first individual competition from Saturday to Sunday. For this reason two individual competitions were carried out on one day. The victory at both competitions was claimed by loca hero Sara Takanashi from Japan ahead of Jacqueline Seifriedsberger (AUT) and Carina Vogt (GER) at the first competition and Jacqueline Seifriedsberger and Sarah Hendrickson (USA) at the second competition
On Saturday the athletes were able to do one training jump as well as one trial jump, before the jury had to cancel the first competition round after 27 jumpers due to the strong wind gusts. Though the athletes had to wait for quite a long time at the hill on Saturday, the decision to postpone the competition to Sunday has proved to be right and ensured the run of two competitions on Sunday.
"I am unbelievably happy about those two victories today, especially because I was able to celebrate them in front of my home crowd. It's great that we were so lucky with the weather today and that we saw two really good competitions", Takanashio said who managed to show jumps of 95.5 and 93.5 m (228 points) as well as 102 and 94 m (240.4 points) in front of her home crowd.
Jacqueline Seifriedsberger ranked second twice
The second place was taken by Jacqueline Seifriedsberger from Austria, who has already been very successful in Sapporo last week. "Of course it was not that easy for us after the official training and the first competition on Saturday had been cancelled. But in situations like that you have to stay focused and that worked out pretty well for me today. I am absolutely satisfied with both of my results", the Austrian said (88 and 92.5 m, 212 points and 96 and 92.5 Meter, 229.4 points).
Vogt and Hendrickson finish third
Carina Vogt from Germany finished third at today's first competition what meant the first podium place for her this season. "I have to admit that the last two weeks have been quite stressful. Actually I did not feel that well today and because of that I am even happier that I managed to achieve this good result", she said after jumps of 89 and 85 m (207.1 points), Since she ranked fourth at the season opening in Lillhehammer, today's third place was the best result for her this winter.
At the second competition US athlete Sarah Hendrickson managed to finish on the podium once again and ranked third. "There have been a lot of delays during the past days and we did not know how the weather would look like today. Nice to see that everything worked out well and that the conditions were so fine. For our team it was not an easy week because our coach had to leave Japan, but right now I am really happy about my result", Hendrickson said (93 and 92 m, 222.6 points), who is now going to travel back to Europa together with her teammates.
Including the national group, 33 athletes were taking part in today's first competition, at the second one there were 30 starters. The teams from France and Italy as well as a few athletes of the Norwegian team did not come to Zao for the World Cup events.
In the World Cup overall ranking Sara Takanashi extended her lead by winning both competitions today (937 points). She is followed by Sarah Hendrickson (707 points) and Jacqueline Seifriedsberger (697 points).
First competition: Complete result as pdf-file
Second competition: Complete result as pdf-file