The German ski jumpers narrowly missed the podium at the penultimate World Cup station, but continued their upward trend in Lahti, Finnish. In the victory of the Slovenian team world champion Anze Lanisek, Philipp Raimund came fifth and stopped his best season result. Olympic champion Andreas Wellinger finished six days after winning the RAW-Air tour.
Lanisek secured his first win of the season and the seventh World Cup success of his career with flights to 131.0 and 128.0 m (276.9 points) on the Salpauselkä-Schanze. The Austrian Stefan Kraft (270.8) was second in front of Poland Pawel Waewel (263.9).
Raimund flies one meter past the podium
Raimund (262.1/125.0+127.0), most recently in Oslo fifth, flew by the equivalent of only one meter past his second World Cup platform. Wellinger, who had won the mixed team twice in the 2017 World Cup silver and gold in 2017, was only just behind the podium with 261.5 points. The significantly improved five -time winner Pius Paschke came in twelve, Karl Geiger took 13th place.
Former team world champion Stephan Leyhe came in 25th place in the last jump in his career. At the season finale in Planica, the Willinger is replaced by Markus Eisenbichler, who also ends his career afterwards.
In the fight for the overall World Cup, Austria’s tour winner Daniel Tschofenig expanded his lead over teammate Jan Hörl with seventh place, who was only 15. Tschofenig goes with a cushion of 114 points on Hörl in the last two individual competitions this coming weekend in the Slovenian Planica. There are still a maximum of 200 points to get there, with Tschofenig can hardly be intercepted.
A super team competition is still on the program in Lahti on Sunday.