The tactical move drawn by Slovenian head coach Goran Janus, who requested for the in-run bar to be lowered by one level, only turned out to be efficient in the first series, as the 23-year-old Prevc landed at 128.0m and scored a solid lead against Norway's Daniel Andre Tande and Kenneth Gangnes.

Half a meter too short for bonus points and podium
Janus decided to repeat the strategy in the finale. Prevc thus jumped from one bar position lower than his closest competitors yet the maneuver backfired. The leading jumper of the World Cup landed at 123.0m, half a meter short of the distance that would have put him among top three due to the bonus for shorter in-run. In other words, Prevc missed the podium by 0.8 points.

Win for Austria's Hayböck
The top step of the podium went to the Austrian jumper Michael Hayböck, who carried out the day's longest jump – 129.0m in the finale. Norway's Tande took second place and Severin Freund, who was on 7th place after the 1st series (Germany), rose to third place. Prevc still has a 557-point lead against Freund in the overall standings ten competitions before the season comes to a close.

"I made a bigger mistake. The calculation didn't work out."
"Things here in Lahti went well again during the practice run, but the outcome was a bit different. When you jump well in the qualifications or during practice, you tell yourself that this doesn't mean anything, since the competition hasn't even started yet and good results need to be repeated at the match. When you go to the competition, you need to clear your head," said Prevc after the match. He also commented the shortened in-run: "We don't talk about that with Goran before the jump; we haven't not for a long time now. We did discuss such decisions before the New Year's tournament, but even that only later, in the evening, when Goran said he had wanted to ask for a shortened in-run and explained why he had changed his mind. Goran sees how far competitors before me have jumped, knows what I'm capable of, and what I can do if I make a small mistake. It turned out well in the first series, but in the finale I made a bigger mistake already at takeoff. Even if I had jumped from the same in-run, I wouldn't have jumped far enough to stay in the lead since I really 'blew it', and so the calculation didn't work out."

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