Sarah Hendrickson dominates first official training in Liberec, Sara Takanashi falters a little.
There were no big surprises in today’s official training for the Junior World Championships in Liberec, but indeed there were one or two small surprises: The results of the last World Cups just indicated, that we will see the next round in the duel between the two Sara(h)s here. For sure it is still very likely, that there will be a close result in the competition on Thursday, but in this first training Sarah Hendrickson (USA) had the edge over Sara Takanashi (JPN) way clearer than expected. With jumps of 103.5 and 99.0 meters the American was best in both rounds, while the Japanese jumped only 98.0 and 96.5 meters and so took only the third places. As both had the same inrun length, these eight meters would mean 16 points in a competition. But we have to see how the performances develop until Thursday.
Second in the first round came Italy’s Evelyn Insam with a jump of 100.0 meters, her 93.5 meters in the second round were still good enough to take the fourth round rank. Slovenia’s Katja Pozun did it the other way round. After taking the fifth place with 95.5 meters first, she jumped 97.5 meters in the second round and so took the second place then. Also Pozun’s team-mates Spela Rogelj (94.0 and 90.5 m), Ema Klinec (twice 93.5 m) and Ursa Bogataj (93.0 and 88.5 m) performed very well today, so Slovenia simply has to count as the odds-on favorite for the team competition that will be held on Saturday. But after the results of the team in the last World Cups this is only a minor surprise.
A little uneven was the performance of Coline Mattel from France, currently third in the overall World Cup. With a nice 97.5 meter jump she took the fourth place in the first round, but on her second attempt she already landed after 89.0 meters and so only came seventh of that round. But in the last World Cups she always improved from training to competition, so we still have to keep her on the list. A second official training will be held tomorrow.
FULL TRAINING RESULTS CAN BE FOUND HERE:
http://www.fis-ski.com/pdf/2013/JP/3777/2013JP3777RLT.pdf