Men’s ski jumpers see first action

The men’s ski jumpers got their first taste of Sochi 2014 action, in the qualifying round for the individual normal hill event, which took place under the floodlights at RusSki Gorki on Saturday evening.

With jumpers scoring a combined points total, based on the distance jumped and a judge’s score, the best score of the qualifying round was recorded by Austria’s Michael Hayböck, who registered a jump of 101.m for a score of 128.6.

He was followed closely by Germany’s Andreas Wank (102.5m/127.9 pts) and Reruhi Shimizu of Japan (101.5m/126.2 pts).

The top 40 of the day’s 51 competitors moved through to Sunday’s first round, where they will be joined by the world’s top ten ski jumpers who have automatically.

The first round will mean a first taste of competitive action at Sochi for defending men’s individual champion Simon Ammann (SUI), along with other leading lights of the ski jump circuit including Gregor Schlierenzauer (AUT), Kamil Stoch (POL), Noriaki Kasai (JPN), Peter Prevc (SLO), Severin Freund and Andreas Wellinger (both GER), and Anders Bardal (NOR).

On completion of the first round, the final of the men’s individual normal hill will follow directly after, starting at 18h30 local time.