Four Hills Tournament in Garmisch-Partenkirchen: Granerud wins the New Year's competition and celebrates like Erling Haaland

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Meditating superstar: Norway's Halvor Egner Granerud cheers, as compatriot Erling Haaland usually does on the soccer field

Photo: LISI NIESNER / REUTERS

Halvor Egner Granerud has underlined his ambitions for overall victory at the 71st Four Hills Tournament.

At the New Year's competition in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, the Norwegian, who jumped 140 and 142 meters, won ahead of Anže Lanišek Kubacki from Slovenia (140 and 137.5 meters) and Poland's Dawid Kubacki (136 and 138.5 meters).

In the overall standings, Granerud, who already won the opening event in Oberstdorf, is now even more ahead of his closest rival, Kubacki.

The DSV jumpers experienced a mixed day of competition.

Andreas Wellinger underlined his good form with jumps of 137 and 133 meters and took eighth place as the best German.

Karl Geiger (131.5 and 131 meters) was only able to partially confirm the upward trend from the start of the tour in Oberstdorf and had to settle for eleventh place.

Markus Eisenbichler was not able to exploit his potential and missed the second round after a jump to 124 meters in 32nd place.

Granerud was already in the lead after the first jump, but he was only 0.6 points ahead of Lanišek – converted into a distance, that's less than half a meter.

Third place, 6.8 points behind, was followed by qualification winner and World Cup leader Kubacki.

Seven of the ten German starters who made it through the qualification also made it into the second round.

In addition to Eisenbichler, only Martin Hamann and Luca Roth had to watch the second jump, Wellinger, Geiger, Stephan Leyhe, Philipp Raimund, Pius Paschke, Constantin Schmid and Felix Hoffmann all collected World Cup points.

From a German point of view, Raimund in particular was able to improve in the second round: The hopeful youngster managed a strong jump of 135 meters, which was enough to move up to 15th place.

The DSV athletes then had nothing to do with the decision about the day's victory.

This again only went through Granerud, who celebrated his success with a cheer in a meditation pose, reminiscent of compatriot and soccer star Erling Haaland.

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