Rydzek gives chase but Riiber prevails in Otepää
Jan 06, 2019·Nordic Combined
Johannes Rydzek did his utmost to snap Jarl Magnus Riiber’s winning streak in Otepää today but the Norwegian remained unbeatable for now. 20.6 seconds separated Riiber from the German in the end. Akito Watabe returned strong also on Day 2 of the Otepää weekend and claimed the remaining spot on the podium by beating Vinzenz Geiger, Mario Seidl and Espen Bjørnstad to the finish line, +43.6 seconds after the winner.
Jarl Magnus Riiber saved the best for last in the jumping round on Otepää’s HS 97 jumping hill and won the first part of the day with a distance of 98 metres. 134.3 points meant a 30 second head start on a German duo consisting of Manuel Faißt and Riiber’s closest pursuer in the overall World Cup, Johannes Rydzek. Rydzek showed strong 94.5 metres and started his race only 36 seconds behind Riiber.
Franz-Josef Rehrl and Szczepan Kupczak confirmed their good jumping shapes with solid performances of 95 and 95.5 metres and started their race together with delays of 41 seconds each. Japan’s Go Yamamoto and Austria’s Mario Seidl shared a start time as well at +0:46 and also Akito Watabe and Espen Bjørnstad were a duo with and equal amount of 122.0 points, starting +0:49 seconds after Riiber.
Much to the delight of the very loud home crowd, Estonian Kristjan Ilves had a much better jump of 92 metres today and ranked 13th. He started his race with a delay of one minute and ten seconds. Out of the very good skiers, Vinzenz Geiger fared best again and was able to take up his race one minute and 17 seconds, three seconds after yesterday’s third placed Martin Fritz from Austria. Fabian Rießle improved on yesterday’s weaker jump and was still in contention for a decent ranking today, starting from position 19 with a delay of one minute and 32 seconds.
Even though Jarl Riiber had to start his race alone and Johannes Rydzek and teammate Manuel Faißt tried to work together for the first part of the race, the German duo was not able to narrow the gap to the leader by more than 12 seconds to the halfway point of the race, when Faißt had to concede defeat to the high speed required. He dropped back from and was caught by a bigger pursuing group consisting of Mario Seidl, Espen Bjørnstad, Akito Watabe and Go Yamamoto in the following lap.
Behind this group, Vinzenz Geiger was pushing hard to improve his jumping ranking. While Rydzek gave up the chase on Riiber in the last lap and was content to settle for rank two, Geiger reached the pursuing group and managed to edge many athletes the German claimed rank four and only had to let a strong Akito Watabe go, who claimed rank three in the final result. Mario Seidl, Espen Bjørnstad, Franz-Josef Rehrl and Martin Fritz all repeated yesterday’s Top Ten results. Fabian Rießle skied ten positions to the front and ended up on the ninth rank, followed by Faißt, who salvaged rank 10.
