Sara Takanashi won the Junior World Championships in Val di Fiemme ahead of Coline Mattel and Maren Lundby. This is Takanashi’s third title in a row, fifth medal for Mattel!
Kudos! Sara Takanashi won the third Junior World Championships in a row. After Erzurum 2012 and Liberec 2013 she won also Fiemme 2014! With this victory Takanashi wrote history, as no other jumper, male or female, did accomplish to win three titles in a row before. Not enough respect can’t be payed to the young Japanese for this achievement. As Takanashi is only 17 years old she may participate in three Junior World Championships more, so it might happen that she she will even expand this record. In the competition today on the hill in Predazzo she jumped twice 100.5 meters, and so clearly won this competition.
After the official training yesterday it was no big surprise that Coline Mattel from France also performed very well today and so won the silver medal. She jumped 97.0 meters twice. Including her win in 2011 and silver with the team last year, this is already her fifth medal at Junior World Championships – also this is a record, as no other girl was able to win so many medals at Junior Worlds yet. Moreover there is only one man who has the same number of medals at home: Austria’s Heinz Kuttin was able to win five medals in the 1980s.
Bronze medal was taken by Norway’s Maren Lundby. She made a pair of jumps of 96.5 and 970 meters and so finished only 2.5 points behind Mattel. She was still fifth after the first round, but as her opponents made some weaker jumps in the second round, she was able to improve to this position and take her first medal home.
Fourth came Takanashi’s team-mate Yuki Ito with jumps of 96.5 and 94.0 meters. She was third after the first round. Fifth place was taken by Germany’s Katharina Althaus who jumped 96.5 and 92.0 meters. Sixt came Ursa Bogataj from Slovenia. She made a pair of jumps of 94.5 and 93.5 meters. In total 41 jumpers from 15 countries participated in these Junior World Championships.
Another official training will be held tomorrow, the team competition is scheduled for Thursday.
FULL RESULTS CAN BE FOUND HERE:
http://data.fis-ski.com/pdf/2014/JP/3861/2014JP3861RL.pdf