Austria grabs their second gold

Just like in the HS 100 event, the Austrian team of Wolfgang Loitzl, Andreas Widhoelzl, Thomas Morgenstern and Martin Hoellwarth took the World Championship gold. They beat Finland, who settled for silver, and the Norwegians, who made up for their failed performance on the small hill and finished with bronze.

During the first leg, Austria's win wasn't so certain: the team dropped to second and third place in the ranking, to finally finish the first round as a leader. In the second round, the Austrians stretched their lead from start to finish. An impressive 138-effort from Martin Hoellwarth confirmed Austria's victory on 1137.3 points and let the Austrian quartet double their World Championship gold.

Two amazing efforts of 139,5 metres from Matti Hautamaeki (first place in the unofficial individual ranking) and the longest jump of the day by the new World Champion Janne Ahonen (142,5 metres) wasn't enough to trouble Austria. Finland finished with 1122.9 points ahead of Norway, who notched up 1113.5 points. All Norwegians proved that they were very anxious to rehabilitate for their failure in the competition on the small hill and the second round effort from Roar Ljoekelsoey (141,5 metres) helped them to assure their place on the podium.

Although we couldn't expect much from the Polish team, their performance in today's competition was a complete failure. But as long as Adam Małysz is the competitor who has to do the job of the whole team, Polish fans cannot hope for improvement. Another big disappointment was 5th place for the Germans, a result which is surely not good enough for HS 100 silver medalists.

The high-hill team competition was the last one for ski jumpers in this year's World Championships. Now the World Cup returns with an individual HS 130 event in Lahti, Finland.