Riiber defends his normal hill title, maiden medals for Herola & Oftebro
Feb 26, 2021·Nordic Combined
Jarl Magnus Riiber has lived up to his status as top favourite and defended his Seefeld 2019 title in the normal hill Individual Gundersen competition in Oberstdorf today. In a race that was thrilling until the very last metres, he outsprinted Finland’s Ilkka Herola, who won silver, by 0.4 seconds. Riiber’s teammate Jens Lurås Oftebro took bronze and finished 0.9 seconds after the winner.
The ski jumping round produced a tight result lists with many medal aspirants. Ryota Yamamoto cemented his status as one of the prime jumpers in Nordic Combined with a beautiful attempt of 106 metres. 143.1 points put him squarely in the lead with 20 seconds on runner-up and teammate Akito Watabe.
The 32-year-old, who is chasing his first World Championship individual gold jumped to 104 metres and formed a trio at the start with title defender Jarl Magnus Riiber (103 m) and Junior World Champion Johannes Lamparter (102.5 m). The three athletes started their pursuit of Yamamoto with delays of 20, 22 and 23 seconds.
For the home team, Eric Frenzel and Fabian Rießle were in the best position and absolutely in striking distance for any medals after jumping to 101 and 102 metres. They ended up on positions eight and nine but just had 40 and 41 seconds of delays and teamed up in the race to catch the group in front of them and were joined by Jens Lurås Oftebro from Norway, who started with a delay of 46 seconds.
A second strong pursuing group had formed around one minute behind the leader. Finland’s Ilkka Herola took up his race with a time behind of on minute and one second after jumping to 99.5 metres. Local heroes Johannes Rydzek and Vinzenz Geiger were fast duo starting at +1:09 after collecting 125.9 and 125.8 points respectively.
As expected, Yamamoto’s advantage melted away already on the first lap and by the time the leaders reached the stadium again for the first time, four athletes were in the lead and a bigger group of pursuers was about 20 seconds behind, containing Jens Oftebro, Lukas Greiderer, Ilkka Herola, Eric Frenzel and Fabian Rießle, as well as Yoshito Watabe, Kristjan Ilves and Ondrej Pazout.
Local hero Vinzenz Geiger had also started with a knife between his teeth and was only 25 seconds behind the leaders. The advantage of the leading foursome continued to melt and by the 6.6 km point, the leaders were caught and the tactical games in the group began.
Jostling for positions were Oftebro, Riiber, Lamparter, Herola, Rießle, Frenzel, Akito Watabe and Lukas Greiderer. Out of this group, Greiderer was the first one who looked in trouble and eventually dropped out, same as his teammate Johannes Lamparter, who had invested a lot into the leading work in the beginning of the race and unfortunately was left with nothing to show for it.
Ilkka Herola made his attack on the uphill in the last lap and only Jarl Magnus Riiber and Jens Lurås Oftebro were able to match the Finns attack. Akito Watabe and the German duo Frenzel and Rießle could not close the gap of a few crucial metres and were relegated to fighting for ranks four to six. Of them, Frenzel had the best end, even though it meant no medal, Watabe finished fifth and Rießle sixth.
Johannes Lamparter claimed position seven, Lukas Greiderer was eighth and Jørgen Graabak and Espen Bjørnstad advanced to positions nine and ten in the race. Local hero Vinzenz Geiger had started too fast in the beginning and was ultimately not able to close the gap to the front and ended up on position 14. Johannes Rydzek also had to pay for trying to go high speed and was 28th.
Czech Republic’s Ondrej Pazout shone with a strong 13th place, a career best for him on the highest level of the sport.
