YUKIYA SATO WON THE QUALIFICATION IN ZAKOPANE

AUTHOR: Sławomir Rykowski PUBLISHED AT: 15-01-2021

Yukiya Sato, the record-holder from the Wielka Krokiew hill in Zakopane, won the qualification for the individual competition with a jump of 133 m (139.8 points). He was also the best in both of the trainings and proved to be among the favorites for the victory in the competition on Sunday. Marcus Eisenbichler lost 2.8 points – right behind him was Andrzej Stękała, the best jumper of the Polish team (135.8 points).

Besides Stękała we will see five more Poles at the Sunday competition. 7th place for Dawid Kubacki (130.5 meters with the same score), 11^th for Klemens Murańka, who posted the longest jump of all the Poles (134.5 m and 128.5 points), 19th for the winner of the 69th Four Hills Tournament Kamil Stoch (120.6 points), 23rd place for Paweł Wąsek (127 m., 118.1 points), and 29th for Jakub Wolny (126 m., 115.4 points). In the individual competition, sadly, we will not see Piotr Żyła, who was disqualified for a non-compliant suit. 

– I’m happy, the jumps were good today. I was most afraid, that I would have problems with the pushing of the bar, but I focused on not thinking about it. I’m sad that there are no supporters on the hill, but there is nothing I can do about it. If I get a chance to jump tomorrow, I will give my best. However, I’m not counting on the podium in the individual competition, but I will be jumping for a couple more years, so I will have a lot of occasions in the future – said Andrzej Stękała after the qualification. 

– Today’s jumps were alright. There were some mistakes, I wasn’t able to take off smoothly and it was a thing that was missing from the very beginning. Luckily, from jump to jump I could see it was going better and better. The qualification jump was good from the technical point of view, despite the fact that it was a little late. The atmosphere in Zakopane was always special because of the supporters – now you can feel the lack of it, but I hope that the normality will be back soon – admitted Dawid Kubacki. 

Full results of today’s qualification are available on the official FIS site: http://medias1.fis-ski.com/pdf/2021/JP/3060/2021JP3060RLQ.pdf