Large Hill, Team, Men

Three teams were favored for this event: Norway, with a strong team of four excellent ski jumpers, despite only finishing sixth in 2014, the defending champions Germany, and Poland, who finished fourth in Sochi, but now had recent Olympic gold medalists Andreas Wellinger and Kamil Stoch in their team. Austria, the most successful team since this event was introduced in 1988 with three gold medals, had former Olympic medalist Heinz Kuttin as their national coach. They had a disappointing season going into the Olympics, however, and were only regarded as outsiders for a medal. All the favorites had former Austrian ski jumpers as national coaches: Alexander Stöckl for Norway, Werner Schuster for Germany and another former Olympic medalist, Stefan Horngacher, for Poland.

Norway went into the lead with their first jump by Daniel-André Tande, and extended their lead after their second jump, performed by Andreas Stjernen. They held the lead for the remainder of the competition, despite excellent jumps from Germany’s anchor man, Andreas Wellinger and Poland’s Kamil Stoch. After the first round Norway had a 2.0 points lead over Germany, with Poland also close, a further 3.0 points behind. Austria was a distant fourth, 52.2 points behind the leaders and with Slovenia a further 1.3 points behind. In the second and final round, Tande and Stjernen extended Norway’s lead over Germany before the two final jumps from Johann André Forfang and Robert Johansson secured the gold medal with a final winning margin of 22.8 points. Before the last jump, Germany was only 0.1 points ahead of Poland, but Wellinger produced a stylish last jump for Germany and secured the silver medal, 3.3 points ahead of the Poles. Austria was able to hold on to fourth place ahead of Slovenia, but they were 120.1 points behind the winning Norwegian team. By winning the team event, and the women’s normal hill, Norway took their Winter Olympic tally of gold medals to 11, overtaking Finland’s former record of 10.