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Dawid Kubacki in Wisla
Photo: KACPER PEMPEL / REUTERS
Ski jumper Dawid Kubacki won the World Cup opener at his home game in Wisła, Poland.
After jumps of 130.5 and 132.5 meters, the 2019 world champion distanced himself from the competition.
Halvor Egner Granerud from Norway and Austria's Stefan Kraft completed the podium in the competition, which was held on mats for the first time.
Kubacki also gets the yellow jersey of the overall leader before the second individual on Sunday (4 p.m. / ARD and Eurosport).
The German team around Karl Geiger fell short of expectations.
Leading figure Geiger was only 34th after the first round and missed the qualification for the second and thus also World Cup points.
Markus Eisenbichler (13th) and Andreas Wellinger (23rd) did not make it into the top ten either.
Surprisingly, the best German was Pius Paschke, who finished twelfth after jumps of 122.5 and 122 meters.
The German ski jumpers around the Olympic silver medalist Katharina Althaus also clearly missed a top position at the earliest start in World Cup history.
With heavy rain at times, Althaus only finished 21st as the third best DSV athlete and had to accept her worst World Cup result in almost seven years.
When Norwegian Silje Opseth won, Selina Freitag was 19th and Agnes Reich 20th, just ahead of the eight-time World Cup winner Althaus.
"We can't be satisfied today, we can do much better than that," said national coach Maximilian Mechler.
Lundby's comeback
Opseth won her first victory after twelve podium places with jumps of 123.0 and 127.0 meters (251.5 points) on the Adam-Malysz-Schanze ahead of the overall World Cup title defender Marita Kramer (244.2) and Eva Pinkelnig (both Austria/243.8) through.
Althaus (196.6) was about 26 meters short of the podium.
Norway's top jumper Maren Lundby celebrated a solid return after a year and a half's break from competitions, finishing 16th.
The Pyeongchang Olympic champion and two-time world champion skipped the past Olympic season because of weight "problems" and wanted to take a stand against the anorexia in her sport.
Earlier start of the World Cup because of the World Cup
Because the world association FIS wanted to avoid the start of the football World Cup, which begins on November 20th, it scheduled the first competitions of the season earlier than ever.
In Poland, men and women jump without artificial snow, like at the Summer Grand Prix, on mats and with an ice track.
At the following stations in Kuusamo (men/November 26th and 27th) and Lillehammer (women/December 3rd and 4th) the snow will celebrate its season debut.
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