Jørgen Graabak wins by mere centimetres in Lahti
Feb 10, 2019·Nordic Combined
An amazingly close photo finish had to determine the winner of today's Individual Gundersen event in Lahti. Jørgen Graabak won by mere centimetres, beating Akito Watabe, who returned strong after yesterday's unlucky accident and crash on the final stretch. Mario Seidl claimed the third place by finishing 15.6 seconds later.
Seidl dominated the jumping round on Lahti’s HS 130 jumping hill and won with a jump of 132 m. 134 points put the Austrian in the lead by 43 seconds and in contention for his second World Cup victory. Akito Watabe was his closest pursuer. The Japanese showed 124 metres (123.2 p.). Espen Bjørnstad had a good jump today as well and landed at 122.5 metres, the intermediate third position and had a 58-second delay at the start.
Hideaki Nagai claimed fourth and Jørgen Graabak was very pleased with a jump of 122 metres that meant the fifth position in the intermediate result list. He started his race with a delay of one minute and 14 seconds. For the Finnish local heroes, the jumping round did not go so well and both Ilkka Herola and Eero Hirvonen had to start with disadvantages of two minutes and 26 seconds and two minutes and 28 seconds respecively. They started together with red bib bearer Magnus Krog (+2:14) and for this fast group of skiers, a Top Ten result was fully achievable if they worked together well.
Mario Seidl was by himself for the first part of the race until Akito Watabe had managed to close the 43-second gap by the 6 km point of the race. Behind the two leaders, Jørgen Graabak was on the hunt himself to close his one minute and 14 gap. The Norwegian succeeded on the final lap, overtaking Watabe and Seidl and taking the lead.
Only Watabe was able to match Graabak’s speed and stayed hot on his heels on the last uphill, in the hairpin turn and all the way into the stadium. After yesterday’s disqualification, Watabe was careful to turn on to the final stretch at a safe distance to Graabak. Then the Japanese proceeded to show probably his strongest sprint ever. He inched closer and closer to sprint king Graabak and at the finish line, only about two centimetres, or the difference between Graabak’s shoe size 42 to Watabe’s 41 that made the difference in the end.
Seidl cruised to the third place and Espen Bjørnstad claimed a fourth place, finishing +32.3 after the winner after he had not been able to follow Graabak in closing the gap to the front in the race. Six other athletes stormed towards the Top Ten positions during the race and as predicted, fast skiers Magnus Krog, Ilkka Herola and Eero Hirvonen were among them. Krog finished fifth, +35.0 after the winner and Herola, Gruber, Hirvonen, Mutru and Denifl followed on the other Top Ten positions, a career-best on his very home ground in Lahti for the young Finn.
