Pungertar sweeps FIS Ski Jumping Contentinal Cup

By Yoon Chul

PYEONGCHANG — Matjaz Pungertar of Slovenia swept the FIS Ski Jumping Continental Cup title at Alpensia in PyeongChang, Thursday.

In the second round of the large-hill event the 20-year-old Slovene, who won Round 1, Wednesday, collected 254.1 points, 9.1 points ahead of runner-up Rok Zima and 14.1 points in front of third-placed Robert Hrgota, both also from Slovenia.

Among Korean athletes Choi Yong-jik had the best performance finishing 14th with 210.3 points.

The two World Cup level jumpers Kim Hyun-ki and Choi Heung-chul failed to recover from a slump finishing 23rd and 24th among 39 challengers.

“Our athletes were in a really bad shape due to a lack of training,” Korean national ski jumping head coach Kim Heung-soo told The Korea Times.

“We have had only 10 days of training since December. Worse still, we could not train regularly due to inappropriate slope conditions,” added Kim.

“Choi Yong-jik is the only athlete who gave a good performance,” Kim said.

Regarding rising young gun Park Je-un, he said, “He may get lots of good lessons with experience. His appearance is a good stimulus for the others, especially Kang Chil-ku,” Kim said.

Kang has been out of condition for a long time and his setback maybe signal that the Koreans squad will find it difficult to get a team medal in the Winter Asian Games in 2011.

“We aim to grab three gold medals in the normal-hill, large-hill and team competition,” Kim said.

“Our main opponents will be Japan and Kazakhstan. If we show our best performance we can achieve our goals. Japan’s first class team is better than us, but I heard that they would send a second team and I think we are better than them,” Kim said.

He also revealed the next schedule before the Winter Asian Games scheduled from Jan. 30 to Feb 6.

“If the condition of the slope in Alpensia is maintained we will train there. We also hope to train on a normal-hill slope. Because the jumpers feel less pressured it is easy to improve technique on this,” added Kim.

So far the Alpensia resort has prepared only a large-hill slope.

“If the condition of the slope is not good for training we may move to Germany,” Kim said.