World Championships in Oberstdorf: Benkovic leaps to gold!

Surprise, surprise: none of the top favourites could stop the young Slovene Rok Benkovic from winning the gold medal during the HS 100 event at World Championships in Oberstdorf. The Czech Republic's Jakub Janda took the silver, while the World Cup standings leader Janne Ahonen finished in third place with bronze.

The tricky wind in Oberstdorf has quickly eliminated the best ski jumpers of the World Cup standings from the fight for the champion's title. After the first leg, only Janne Ahonen with his good 97-metre jump and 4th place before the final round had still some chances to take the gold. But the advantage the young Rok Benkovic took over his rivals after his massive first-round effort was impressive. In perfect wind conditions, he soared to 101 metres and made it clear he was going to be tough to beat. Before the final round, Bjoern Einar Romoeren was second (98,5 metres). Another Slovene, Jernej Damjan, went third (99,5 metres).

In the second leg, the wind conditions became more or less equal for competitors. The launch was moved up, but the majority of the jumpers didn't manage to improve their results. There were however a few exceptions: Martin Schmitt, 20th after the first round, jumped a steady 93 metres in his second attempt and moved to 12th place. Also Adam Małysz, with his nice 93,5 metres, made a jump from 16th to 6th place in the competition's rankings. Nevertheless, this result couldn't be satysfying for the double World Champion from Predazzo.

Jakub Janda and Janne Ahonen, 6th and 4th after the first leg, managed to make their second-round jumps good enough to guarantee them the silver and the bronze. But everybody was waiting impatiently to see if the talented jumper from Slovenia was going to grab the gold medal. His 91 metres looked like it might not be enough to win, but it was: with 256 points, Rok Benkovic became the new ski jumping World Champion

Out of four Polish jumpers who had qualified for the competition, only Adam Małysz and Marcin Bachleda entered the top 30. After an impressive 94,5 metres in the first jump, Bachleda was 16th with an advantage of 0,5 point Adam Małysz. In the second round, he couldn't match his first attempt: a feeble 84,5 metres made him drop to 30th place.

The World Championships continue tomorrow with a team event on HS 100.