The second best was the winner of the last three competitions In Lahti and Kuopio, Austrian jumper Michael Hayböck, who was 9 points behind Prevc after the first series. The third man on the podium was German Severin Freund. Prevc, who has now won 12 times this season, can already secure the large Crystal Globe on Sunday – he only needs to get one point ahead of Freund.

Confident and calm
"I can be completely calm for now. I haven’t had such a great competition in quite a while. I can be confident and very calm. You can be more restless after failures, when things don’t work out according to plans, when it’s not like you imagined. When it works out, you’re satisfied and calm. The jumps had already been on a fairly high level before [Saturday’s] match. I had been a bit worried [on Friday] if I could repeat previous jumps at the match. I was relieved when I jumped well in both series. I’m hoping for good jumps [on Sunday], too," noted Prevc about his hopes for another successful day.

Ski jumping hill similar to Bloudek’s at Planica, Slovenia
This winter’s best ski jumper also explained why he managed to get used to the new ski jumping hill in Kazakhstan that quickly. "I came on the hill and got along with it quickly. It’s similar to Bloudek’s when you’re in the air. You’re high above the back, which is very elongated. You need to persist throughout the flight, because you don’t know if you’ll land at 125, 130 or 13 metres. You need to wait until the end to see how it turns out," estimated Prevc before adding: "Almaty is quite a colourful capital, a mix of the old and the new. There are 20 old blocks of flats, and a new building right beside them. Another city after Nizhny Tagil that I had not yet visited and now got the opportunity to see."

A. V., MMC; translated by K. Z.