Severin Freund won the World Cup competition in Lillehammer and took his first win this season. After only one round on the normal hill, the overall World Cup winner came in close ahead of Kenneth Gangnes with 94.5 m and 129.7 points. The third place went to Andreas Stjernen.

Freund said: "You had to speculate a bit about when to go to the start, so you're not up there too early. It was a long day, we started early with the training round. Of course such conditions get annoying, but there's nothing you can do about the weather and I'm happy that we had a competition today. I'm also very happy, that the guys of our team, who had problems in Klingenthal, scored good points today."

Marathon in Lillehammer

After the qualification, that was originally planned for Friday, also became a victim of the win Saturday afternoon and the competition was moved from the large to the normal hill, the first round took a record of 127 minutes.

At the end Kenneth Gangnes and Andreas Stjernen rewarded the Norwegian fans for their patience. But Gangnes also had some bad luck and missed his first win in the World Cup by only 0.1 point with his 95.5 m. He said afterwards: "This second place feels like a win for me. I've never achieved such a good result before. We trained very well summer and we have a good team spirit."

His teammate Andreas Stjernen achieved his second podium result in the World Cup in third with 96 m and 127.8 points. He said: "I'm extremely happy. This is only my second podium ever, so I don't care about the wind conditions today. I had really good conditions and I also made a good jump. Tomorrow I want to jump on the same level again."

Kraft closely misses podium

Only 0.1 point behind the Top 3, 4-Hills-Tournament winner Stefan Kraft came in fourth with 95.5 m. Marinus Kraus finished fifth with 97 m and 126.5 m and achieved his best World Cup result in almost two years.

Daniel Andre Tande, the winner of the competition in Klingenthal, was the third Norwegian in the Top 10 in sixth with 126.3 points. The hosts could have achieved an even better team result today, but a total of seven athletes were disqualified today because their suits were not compliant to the rules, among them four Norwegians. Lauri Asikainen came in on a very good seventh place with 125.8 points, a ray of hope for the Finnish team.

Domen wins Prevc-duel

Domen Prevc tied for eighth with Roman Koudelka (125.2 points), and was better than his brother for the first time. Peter Prevc was eleventh. Manuel Poppinger completed the Top 10 with 124.4 points. Behind Johann Andre Forfang, the two Austrians Michael Hayboeck and Gregor Schlierenzauer finished 13th and 14th and were within reach of the top positions.

Polish team improved

Kamil Stoch was the best of a significantly improved Polish team in 15th. Simon Ammann once again had problems with the landing and so he was only 21st. Vladislav Boyarintsev scored some World Cup points in 25th.

With this win, last season's overall World Cup winner Severin Freund, took the yellow bib again after this winter's second individual competition. The German team is also leading the Nation's Cup.

The qualification for the second competition in Lillehammer starts on Sunday at 1:30 pm CET, followed by the competition at 2:45 pm CET.

Source: fis-ski.com