Peter Prevc won the first individual competition in Almaty and is close to winning this season's overall World Cup title. The Slovenian 4-Hills-Tournament winner showed the best jumps in both rounds with 141 m and 137.5 m and with his total of 272.7 points he took a clear win ahead of Michael Hayboeck and Severin Freund.

Peter Prevc said after this success: "I'm happy to be here in Kazakhstan. At first it was a bit complicated, because we had to wait a long time for the visa, but then everything was good. It's my first time here and so it's a new venue for me. It's a really nice, modern facility and it was not difficult to get used to it."

Hayboeck, who won the last three competitions in a row, scored 254.7 points with his jumps on 138 m and 133 m. It's always nice to be here in Kazakhstan. The first time I was here was in 2011 and I have positive memories. I like the hill, the whole facility and the atmosphere," told the Austrian.

World Champion Severin Freund achieved his tenth podium finish this season with two jumps on 135 m and 252.0 points. I took me some time to adjust to the hill, but I made it and I'm satisfied with being on the podium. I think everything is perfect here and the organizing committee is doing a very good job. 

Strong Slovenes

Best Norwegian was Daniel Andre Tande in fourth with 136.5 m and 129 m and 244.1 points.

Robert Kranjec, fifth with 129.5 m and 133 m and 242.7 points, and Jurij Tepes, who was sixth two points behind his teammate, provided a strong team result for Slovenia.

Taku Takeuchi, who had to jump with borrowed skis in Friday's qualification because his own didn't arrive in Kazakhstan on time, was the best Japanese in seventh with 235.6 points. His teammate Noriaki Kasai came in tenth with 232.1 points. Kenneth Gangnes moved up from 26th to eighth in the final round with 234.7 points.

Roman Koudelka achieved a top result for the Czech team in ninth with 232.5 points.

Stefan Kraft could not repeat his podium result from Kuopio and had to be satisfied with an eleventh place. Vincent Descombes Sevoie of France came in on a strong 12th place. Anders Fannemel, Manuel Poppinger and Stephan Leyhe completed the Top 15.

Good team performance of Germany

Karl Geiger, Andreas Wank, Andreas Wellinger and Richard Freitag finished 17th, 18th, 20th and 25th and scored valuable points for Germany in the Nation's Cup. Simon Ammann was the only Swiss competitor in the final in 22nd. Ilmir Hazetdinov and Evgeniy Klimov scored points for Russia in 27th and 29th.

After a promising performance in the qualification, it didn't go well for Poland in the competition. With Dawid Kubacki in 30th only one Pole made it to the final round. Maciej Kot, the winner of the qualification, was disqualified.

Peter Prevc close to overall win

With seven individual competitions left this season, Prevc now has a lead of 599 points over Severin Freund. This means that the Slovene has to finish ahead of Freund in Sunday's competition in order to secure his first overall World Cup title.

The competition will start at 1:00 pm CET.

Source: fis-ski.com