Ahonen made history

From tte Eurosport.com: Austria's Martin Hoellwarth denied Janne Ahonen a grand slam by taking the final leg of the Four Hills tournament in Bischofshofen. The Austrian beat the Finnish overall winner by six points in a thrilling finale which also saw Daiki Ito break the course record with a lavish leap of 143-metres!

Who said ski jumping was becoming boring and predictable?

Thursday's final leg of the celebrated annual Four Hills tournament had everything: suspense, unpredictability, falls, tears, broken records...


Janne wins the Four Hills title, but couldn't quite become the second man in history to win the four legs! Well, he is still young...

Nat

now i only see four jumpers who really can compete with janne: höllwarth (yay!), thomas morgenstern (yay!), adam malysz and jakub janda...

Actually, he isn't and he's only going to jump one more season.

As to the competition yesterday, isn't it funny how Ahonen's and Höllwart's jumps are exactly the same in combined length, but Höllwart still won by 7 points. The judges keep giving Janne lower points than everyone else.

Ice

which is mainly cause ahonen always jumps too far to make a proper landing which is one of the main things that the jury looks at- they don't do that cause he's finnish

Ahonen's always been one of the best flyers in the world. He's got a great style. In the last few races, if he's jumped 135m and someone else jumped the exact same distance with the same landing, Ahonen gets less points.

And the only reason he flies "too" long is because the juries keep the starting pole too high. They should lower it to make the competitons more exciting, but they keep it high because it looks better on TV.

Well, Janne's going to win the WC anyway.

Ice

honestly said, i only saw the 1st january competition... he fought hard to stand the landing in one of of his jumps

Actually, he touched the snow...

True, but he did jump 6 metres (?) longer than anyone else. That's understandable. But even when jumps the same exact length and does a great landing he still gets fewer points. Ever wondered why there isn't a Finnish judge?

Ice

It's funny how the Finnish judge pulled by far the lowest points for Ahonen's 150+ metres jump in Willingen yesterday.

Of course he did. So no one could accuse him of giving his own countries jumpers better points. Something the Norwegian, German and Austrian judges should learn too.

Ice