The German team won the first competition of the new World Cup season. Overall World Cup winner Severin Freund, the team Olympic champions Andreas Wellinger and Andreas Wank and local hero Richard Freitag, scored 1021.9 points and took the win ahead of Slovenia and Austria.

World Champion Freund was the outstanding athlete of the team with 138 m and 136 m and earned the lead for his team at the end of the first round.

Richard Freitag enthused the over 7000 fans with his final jump on 138 m. He said afterwards: "This is a win for the organizers in Klingenthal, they did an amazing job. It was a great start for us, but it wouldn't have been possible without the effort of the organizers."

Prevc brothers for Slovenia

For Slovenia, the only 16-year-old Domen Prevc showed an impressive performance in his World Cup debut with 132.5 m and 132 m. Only his brother Peter was better. The second of last season's overall World Cup landed at 139 m and 132 m and Richard Freitag later called him the "benchmark". Anze Lanisek and Jurij Tepes jumped consistently and with 1001.5 m the Sloveneshad a good lead ahead of the Austrians. Lanisek told later: "I feel great, hopefully we'll have more moments like these during this season. I'm satisfied with my performance, I did my best. I hope that I can score some points tomorrow and I want to remain on the team until the final in Planica."

Michael Hayboeck, Gregor Schlierenzauer, Manuel Fettner and Stefan Kraft had a better start than last year, but with 934.2 points they came in clearly behind the best today.

Schlierenzauer with room for improvement

The strongest performance was shown by 4-Hills-Tournament winner Stefan Kraft with 131.5 m and 130.5 m. Record World Cup winner Schlierenzauer had his longest jump with 125 m and said: "It's always nice to be on the podium, especially with the team. It was a good start for our team today. I still have room for improvement and some things to work on. But all in all it's good to be on the podium. I was confident yesterday that we would be able to jump today. If you know theorganizers here, you know that they don't leave anything to chance."

Japan fourth - Disappointing Polish team

The fourth place went to the team of Japan with Grand Prix winner Kento Sakuyama, Daiki Ito,Taku Takeuchi and Noriaki Kasai. Takeuchi showed his skills with 136.5 m in the first round. The team scored a total of 906.5 points. 31.1 points behind, the Czech team finished fifth. Especially Roman Koudelka was strong with his jumps on 128.5 and 130 m. The Polish team still has a lot of room for improvement. Kamil Stoch and his teammates didn't have one jump over the 130 m mark and scored only 869.0 points.

It was a good start of the season for Switzerland. The athletes around super star Simon Ammannscored 816.9 points and came in seventh. With 130.5 m and 132 m Ammann showed that he has to be reckoned with. 12.1 points behind the Swiss, Finland was eighth.

Disqualifications for Norway and Russia

After a disqualification of one of their jumpers, the teams of Norway and Russia had no chance to qualify for the final. Anders Fannemel and Evgeniy Klimov failed the equipment control because of their suits. The eleventh place went to Italy.

The qualification for the individual competition starts on Sunday at 12:30 pm, followed by the competition at 2:00 pm CET.

Source: fis-ski.com