Season victory 8 for Jarl Magnus Riiber in Oberstdorf
Jan 26, 2020·Nordic Combined
He was skiing in a group for most of the race but in the end, Jarl Magnus Riiber triumphed again. This time, his young teammate Jens Lurås Oftebro returned to the podium on position two (+6.0) and Franz-Josef Rehrl claimed the first individual podium of the season for team Austria on three (+8.0).
Jens Lurås Oftebro won the jumping competition with a beautiful, clean jump to 137.5 metres, including five times the score 19 from the jumping judges and a good telemark landing. While Jarl Magnus Riiber jumped 3 metres further, a good landing eluded him and so his younger teammate wrestled the jumping win from Riiber with a total 148.4 points. Two points less for Riiber meant a delay of eight seconds at the start line for the World Cup dominator.
The duo of Oftebro and Riiber had a gap of twenty-three seconds to the next pursuer: Franz-Josef Rehrl. The Austrian showed 133.5 metres (140.7 p.) and was followed by Espen Bjørnstad (+0:42) and Akito Watabe (+0:48). Manuel Faißt was the best German with 132 metres and 132.8 points but already had a delay of one minute and two seconds at the start line. The jumping Top Ten were completed by Einar Lurås Oftebro, Bernhard Gruber, Martin Fritz and Kristjan Ilves, who all started between +1:04 and +1:09.
The fast skiers all struggled a little more on the hill and so Jørgen Graabak had to contend with a time disadvantage of +1:25, Fabian Rießle with +1:35 and Magnus Krog with +1:54. Red-bib bearer Ilkka Herola (FIN) began his race at +2:08 only. While the time difference between the athletes were big, the difficult cross-country tracks in Oberstdorf promised to be selective and favoured the stronger skiers.
As expected, Jarl Riiber and Jens Oftebro skied together after a short while into the race. The truly impressive skier of the race, however, was Franz-Josef Rehrl, who took his heart into his hands and tried to close the gap to the two leaders. Despite being rather known as a strong ski jumper than fast crosss-country skier, Rehrl persevered, even when it didn’t look like the gap would be narrowing and was rewarded by the halfway point: he managed to reach Riiber and Oftebro.
From then on, the three athletes stayed together and Rehrl recovered enough to even take the lead for short amounts of time. Om the last uphill, Riiber showed his muscles and left the other two behind to claim an undisputed eighth season victory. Oftebro and Rehrl kept fighting but on the final stretch, Rehrl had to concede to the fact that he had used a lot of power in the first two laps of the race. So it was Oftebro returned to the podium after his early season successes in Ruka to claim a career-best second place. Rehrl, in turn, took his first World Cup podium in a year.
Behind the three leading athletes, Espen Bjørnstad and Akito Watabe tried to stick and work together but could not escape a big group of fast-approaching skiers. In the end, Jørgen Graabak stormed to position four and claimed valuable points in his fight for the overall second position in the World Cup standings. Fabian Rießle delighted the German crowds on rank five, Martin Fritz was sixth, Espen Bjørnstad seventh, Ilkka Herola eighth, Manuel Faißt ninth and Akito Watabe tenth. Local hero Vinzenz Geiger skied with a lot of frustration and set the fastest time of 25:04.4. He improved from position 31 to 18.
