| NEWS | BIOGRAPHIES | EVENTS | INSIDE FIS | MARKETING | MEDICAL | |
CROSS-COUNTRY
SKI JUMPING
NORDIC COMBINED
ALPINE SKIING
FREESTYLE SKIING
SNOWBOARD
OTHERS
SPEED SKIING
GRASS SKIING
TELEMARK
MASTERS
CALENDAR
RESULTS
STATISTICS
LIVE TIMING
FIS HISTORY
Recent FIS News
Below you will find a listing of recent FIS News
Find your news
Nordic Combined: The battle is still on
A deficit of 164 points is not that much when you have a lot of competitions to make up this disadvantage and there is still a lot at stake with two events to go... 164 points separate the overall World Cup leader and defending champion Jason Lamy Chappuis (FRA) and his first chaser Akito Watabe from Japan.
"Everything can happen", Lamy Chappuis says, but the world and Olympic champion knows that he holds good cards after having won five races and ending runner-up another six times. "I will fight until the end, but it will become difficult, almost impossible, to beat Jason", Watabe replies. The Japanese, however, can be proud of his World Cup season at the highest level, with three victories and a total of 16 top ten finishes.
The two competitions in Oslo on Friday with an individual Gundersen and Saturday's final individual Gundersen with two jumps and a 15 km cross-country race for the overall's Top 30 will mark the end of a memorable season.
A new format, the Penalty Race was introduced and run successfully in Lillehammer and Val di Fiemme. A traditional format, the Team Sprint, celebrated its comeback at the World Cup level and will be a World Championship event in 2013. Ten different athletes have won the 21 individual competitions so far - and 50 per cent of them managed to win their first World Cup competition in their careers. Their names are Magnus Krog, Haavard Klemetsen, Jan Schmid, Alessandro Pittin and Akito Watabe.
Will there be an 11th or even 11th and 12th winner in Oslo during the final stage? Will another Nordic Combined athlete celebrate his first ever World Cup victory? But most importantly: will Akito Watabe be able to achieve two miracles and bring the crystal globe back to Japan, where it was last with Kenji Ogiwara in 1995?
Contributed by Egon Theiner