June 30, 2012 (Stams, Austria) – Mark today as a great start to the international season for the North Americans, as the COC circuit kicked off with the first of a two-day competition in this historic jumping village about 35km from Innsbruck, under very warm temperatures.

20-year-old Canadian star Mackenzie Boyd-Clowes was on top of his game as he soared to a pair of jumps of 110.5 and 104 meters for a total of 234.6 points, marking his first COC Cup win. Poland’s Dawic Kubacki took second, while third went to Austrian super star Wolfgang Loitzl. Boyd-Clowes has had two other podium finishes in his career. Following the competition the Canadian told  FIS, “I wasn’t really expecting anything, I just wanted to jump far.”

The big story for the American men was the marvelous 10th place for Pete Frenette (Saranac Lake, NY) with two jumps of 98.5 and 106.0 meters. Anders Johnson (Park City, UT) also looked strong finishing in 18th position with jumps of 96.5 and 100.5 respectively. Nick Alexander (Lebanon, NH) was 43rd with one jump of 90.0 meters. Another Canadian men, Eric Mitchell was 60th, with one jump of 80.0 meters.

Today’s FIS competition marked the first in which the new rules concerning ski jumping suits was in effect. A total of 16 athletes were disqualified in round one. A second competition will be held at Stams on Sunday with training at 9am, followed by the first of two competition jumps slated to start at 10:30 am (ET).

With files from FIS.

Results

1. Mackenzie Boyd-Clowes (Ca) 100
2. Dawid Kubacki (Pl) 80
3. Wolfgang Loitzl (At) 60
4. Matic Kramarsic (Si) 50
5. Jan Matura (Cz) 45
6. Tomaz Naglic (Si) 40
7. Matjaz Pungertar (Si) 36
8. Primoz Pikl (Si) 32
9. Daniel Wenig (De) 29
10. Peter Frenette (Us) 26
11. Vincent Descombes Sevoie (Fr) 24
12. Danny Queck (De) 22
13. David Unterberger (At) 20
14. Vladimir Zografski (Bg) 18
15. Nicolas Mayer (Fr) 16
16. Karl Geiger (De) 15
17. Marinus Kraus (De) 14
18. Anders Johnson (Us) 13
19. Anders Jacobsen (No) 12
20. Jan Ziobro (Pl) 11
21. Gregor Deschwanden (Ch) 10
22. Manuel Poppinger (At) 9
23. Martin Cikl (Cz) 8
24. Marcin Bachleda (Pl) 7
25. Emmanuel Chedal (Fr) 6
26. Thomas Diethart (At) 5
27. Martin Schmitt (De) 4
28. Ilmir Hazetdinov (Ru) 3
29. Alexey Romashov (Ru) 2
30. Lukas Mueller (At) 1