Anssi Koivuranta started his career as a Nordic Combined competitor and indeed was rather good at it. He won the 2008-9 world cup in the discipline. At the 2006 Olympics he was part of the Finish Nordic Combined team that picked up a bronze medal, upgraded to gold at the following year's world championships. That year he also secured an individual Nordic combined bronze medal at those same world championships. However, he always was far superior in his ski jumping and was always working at improving his cross-country skiing in order to not lose all of his advantage. So from 2011 he has focused only on trying to get into the Finnish ski jumping team.
Well events today may well suggest that he has arrived.
Yesterday there were fears about the weather affecting today's third round of the Four Hills tournament. However, the weather didn't close in until all the competitors had fortunately completed their first round. At the end of that round Koivuranta had jumped 132.5m the second longest of the day 1m down on Simon Ammann SWI, but with 127.5 points to 126.3 he was ahead on points.
The result which saw Polish tour leader Kamil Stoch complete the podium made history as the first occasion that someone had been on the podium in a World Cup ski jumping and Nordic combined event during their career. Ammann himself was making a little bit of history with his third podium of this years four hills he joins five others who have secured three or more wins in the fours hills in at least three sessions.
Koivuarnata's previous individual best in a World Cup ski jumping event had been in 2011 at Lillehammer where he came 7th. It is his second top ten finish in this year's Four Hills having come 10th at Garmisch-Partenkirchen on New Year's Day.
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