Hirayama and Sansoz win in Kranj and conquer the World Cup Difficulty 2000

Yuji Hirayama and Liv Sansoz win the fifth leg at Kranj and in doing so conquer the World Cup Difficulty 2000

November 2000

Yuji Hirayama and Liv Sansoz deservedly won the fifth and final leg at Kranj, Slovenia on Sunday night and in doing so also conquered the World Cup Difficulty 2000. The Japanese and the Frenchwoman thereby repeat their 1998 success and add the World Cup 2000 to their long list of victories.

Alexandre Chabot and Muriel Sarkany, the only two athletes who posed a serious threat to the final outcome, were unable to assert themselves in Kranj, placing 4th and 5th respectively and finishing 2nd in the final World Cup ranking.

Kranj proved to be decisive not only for Hirayama and Chabot, but also for the Italian Cristian Brenna. An impressive second place enabled him to leapfrog three positions in the World Cup ranking to place third overall, thereby relegating Dino Lagni to fourth. Andreas Bindhammer produced his best performance this year by making the final look easy until the last roof where he fell, placing third in Kranj and 16th overall.

In the women's event the habitual Superfinal was, for once, not disputed between Sansoz and Sarkany, but between Liv Sansoz and Martina Cufar: Cufar fell exiting from the final roof, while Sansoz calmly topped out beneath a cheering crowd. Stephanie Bodet's consistency throughout the season paid off - her third place in Kranj was amply enough for a third place in the final World Cup ranking.

The first 10 places in the Men's ranking are taken up by four Frenchmen (Chabot 2nd, Dewilde
5th, Legrand 8th, Caude 9th, two Italians (Brenna 3rd, Lagni 4th), three Ukrainians (Petrenko 6th, Kazbekov 7th, Krivocheicev 9th) and, of course, one Japanese, the winner Yuij Hirayama.

The first 10 places in the Women's ranking are taken up, once again, by four Frenchwomen (Sansoz 1st, Bodet 3rd, Minoret 7th, Levet 9th), one Belgian (Sarkany 2nd), one Slovenian (Cufar 4th), one Swiss (Schultz 5th), one Korean (Go 6th), one Italian (Lavarda 8th) and one German (Sedlmayer 10th).

Back to Competition 2000

World Cup Difficulty 2000 ranking

Yuji Hirayama and Liv Sansoz, victorious in Kranj and the overall winners of the World Cup 2000

Results women
1	Sansoz Liv	FRA
2	Cufar Martina	SLO
3	Bodet StÃ©phanie	FRA
4	Schultz Anna Tina	SUI
5	Sarkany MuriÃ«l	BEL
6	Go Mi-Sun	KOR
7	Choumilova Elena	RUS
8	Knorr Damaris	GER
9	Lavarda Jenny	ITA
10	Kotasova Vera	CZE

Results men
1	Hirayama Yuji	JPN
2	Brenna Cristian	FRA
3	Bindhammer Andreas	GER
4	Chabot Alexandre	FRA
5	Kazbekov Serik	UKR
6	Wandeler Simon	SUI
7	Dewilde Paul	FRA
8	Gnerro Alberto	ITA
9	Lagni Bernardino	ITA
9	Mrazek Tomas	CZE