Finns take two medals at Ski-flying World Championships

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The Finnish team met its pre-competition targets at the FIS Ski-flying World Championships in Oberstdorf in Germany over the weekend.
      The team had hoped to secure two medals, and Janne Ahonen’s bronze in the individual event on Friday and Satrurday was coupled with a silver in the team jumping on Sunday.
     
Ahonen collected his 18th medal from a major championship on Saturday in a two-day competition that was dominated by the Austrians, who celebrated a 1-2 victory through the 18-year-old comet Gregor Schlierenzauer and Martin Koch. Ahonen was a respectful distance back in third, with jumps of 209 metres and 208.5 metres on the second day that took him past the early leader Björn Einar Romören of Norway, who slipped back into fourth place.
     
On the Sunday, the Austrians continued their domination of the event, and won by an impressive margin of more than 76 points, as Koch and Schlierenzauer were joined by FIS World Cup winner Thomas Morgenstern and Andreas Kofler.
      The Finnish quartet of Ahonen, Janne Happonen, Harri Olli, and Matti Hautamäki comfortably held off the challenge of the Norwegians to take silver.
      This was the third silver medal in this event for Ahonen and Hautamäki, to go with those from 2004 and 2006. Happonen, who was the best of the Finnish jumpers on Sunday and came third behind Koch and Schlierenzauer, was also in the silver-medal 2006 team.
     
With his second medal at the competition, Janne Ahonen moved up alongside Olympic legend Matti Nykänen with 19 medals from Olympic and World Championships ski-jumping.
      Ahonen will be 31 in May, and questions are now being asked about his future plans for the sport.
      He was non-committal on the subject in Oberstdorf.


Links:
  Ski-flying World Championships, Oberstdorf
  Janne Ahonen (Wikipedia)
  FIS-ski pages

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