Stefan Rettenegger golden for Austria at Lausanne2020
Jan 19, 2020·Nordic Combined
Stefan Rettenegger jumped to the pole position for the men with a nice jump of 90 metres. A point total of 120.6 points gave the Austrian eight second of head start on Norway’s Sebastian Østvold. USA’s Niklas Malacinski was third after jumping to 85.5 metres. With 116.9 points, the American started 15 seconds after Rettenegger.
Germany’s Jan Andersen started his race 16 seconds after the leaders and two local heroes, Matteo Baud and Marco Heinis were fifth and sixth with time delays of +0:24 seconds each. Fast Finn Perttu Reponen started his race one second later.
In the race, Stefan Rettenegger looked strong at the head of the field and instead of the pursuers closing the gap to him, he skied away from Sebastian Østvold. By the 2 km point, the gap had grown to 13.9 seconds and 4 km after the start, a bigger pursuing group had formed around the +0:25 second mark. Østvold, Baud and Reponen skied together and on the last lap, they fought for the remaining two medals. By the finish line, the gap to Rettenegger had shrunken to 14 seconds again but the pursuers were not able to endanger the Austrian’s victory at all.
Reponen lived up to his strong cross-country reputation and took the silver, while Østvold had not felt fully fit in the race but still managed to claim the bronze. Local hero Baud finished in fourth (+31.5), American Niklas Malacinski was fifth, Stefano Radovan captured rank six for Italy, Jan Andersen was seventh and Severin Reiter (AUT), Waltteri Karhumaa (FIN) and Lenard Kersting (GER) rounded out the Top Ten.
