Winter Sports Round-Up: Ahonen and Manninen set new records

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Over a weekend on skis that was remarkably similar to many others this winter, both ski-jumper Janne Ahonen and Nordic Combined exponent Hannu Manninen chalked up fresh victories and set new records.
      In Ahonen’s case the records came with his victory at Willingen in Germany. After placing only a lowly sixth on his first jump, Ahonen pulled out a truly prodigious leap of 152 metres on his second, more than enough to see off the opposition and relegate Martin Höllwarth of Austria to second place. The first-round leader Daiki Ito of Japan could not respond to the challenge of the Finn and slipped back to 6th. Third place went to Andreas Küttel of Switzerland.
      Ahonen’s second jump had people gasping, as he took full advantage of the wind conditions to break the hill record, previously held by Adam Malysz of Poland. Ahonen also equalled the record for the number of individual World Cup competitions won in a single season. He now has eleven. Only Malysz and Martin Schmitt of Germany have managed this feat before. What makes Ahonen’s achievement all the more astonishing is that the season is not yet half over: there have been only 13 competitions out of a total of 28.
      It hardly needs to be said that the Finn currently leads the FIS World Cup standings by a margin of more than 500 points, with Höllwarth in second place and Jakub Janda of the Czech Republic in 3rd.
      The ski-jumping circus moves on to Ulm on the 15th of January for a ski-flying event. The chances of Ahonen’s actually going into low earth-orbit are quite large, given his current form.
     
At Seefeld in Austria, Hannu Manninen collected a double, winning the sprint event on Saturday and the normal race on Sunday. It was a repeat performance from last year.
      Manninen’s win on Sunday further extended his lead in the FIS World Cup standings over Ronny Ackermann of Germany, who finished 3rd. Manninen again swept through the field on the ski-track after finishing 10th on the hill. He won handily by 3.9 seconds from Felix Gottwald of Austria.
      Manninen’s record-breaking exploit came in the fact that his second win of the weekend marked up the 26-year-old’s 26th individual World Cup victory, equalling the feat of the legendary Norwegian Nordic Combined expert Bjarte Engen Vik. Despite his relative youth, Manninen has been at the top of the sport since the mid-1990s, with his first victory recorded at Falun in 1996.
     
It was also a reasonably successful weekend for the Alpine skiers. Tanja Poutiainen hung on to her overall lead in the women’s World Cup standings, despite taking 6th place in the giant slalom and the slalom at Santa Caterina in Italy. She also continues to lead the slalom rankings.
      At Chamonix, Kalle Palander showed a more promising turn of speed than of late, and snatched 4th place in the men's slalom event.
      However, the real delight was that he was not alone among the Finnish skiers in the points. Jukka Leino produced a blistering second run to haul himself up into 14th place, and Jukka Rajala scored his first-ever World Cup points by finishing 22nd. Leino’s achievement was all the more impressive as he was returning from a month-long layoff after injury.


Links:
  FIS results

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