Great news from Zakopane. It hasn’t been this good for 10 years
The first team competition in the World Cup this season will take place on Saturday in Zakopane. As many as 13 teams will be at the start! This is a rare situation.
The Polish Tournament has been going on since last week. The first stop for the jumpers was Wisła, where, apart from the qualifications and the individual competition, there was also a duet competition. Then the players reported to Szczyrk, where ultimately only Tuesday’s qualifications were held. At the end, everyone gathered in Zakopane, the temple of Polish ski jumping.
A unique team competition in Zakopane
As for the competition at Wielka Krokiew, qualifications are scheduled for Friday (6:00 p.m.), followed by team and individual competitions on the following days (both events will start at 4:00 p.m.). Fans who went to the capital of the Polish Tatra Mountains can count on a lot of emotions.
As many as 13 teams entered the team competition. According to Adam Bucholz from the Skijumping.pl website, this is the best result in almost 10 years. The last time it was so good was on November 23, 2013, when 14 teams started in Klingenthal.
The following countries are scheduled to start in Zakopane: Romania, Kazakhstan, Czech Republic, USA, Italy, Finland, Switzerland, Poland, Japan, Norway, Slovenia, Germany and Austria.
Poland won only once in Zakopane
The current season is not going according to the Polish national team’s wishes, so it is difficult to assume that the Polish team will effectively join the fight for the podium. It must be remembered that the Austrians have been in excellent shape since the beginning of the season, some jumpers from Germany are still showing a lot, and recently the Slovenians have been impressive.
In the past, 11 team competitions have been held in Zakopane, the first of which was in 2013, when Poland lost only to Slovenia. In later years, we won only one victory at Wielka Krokiew. This took place during the 2017/18 Olympic season during the term of office of Stefan Horngacher, the current coach of the German team. We stood on the podium seven times in total. Apart from one victory, we took second place four times and third place twice. The “team” line-ups will be announced after Friday’s qualifications.
