Riiber goes the distance to victory #2
Jan 30, 2021·Nordic Combined
A very much in-control Jarl Magnus Riiber prevailed also over today’s 10 km distance in Seefeld and remains on track to win his second Nordic Combined TRIPLE trophy. He ended the race with an 33.3 second advantage over Akito Watabe. The Japanese skied together with Ilkka Herola for long stretches of the race but managed to beat the Finn in a finish line sprint by clear 1.2 seconds.
The jumping round was made increasingly difficult with an approaching snow shower, while the second PCR which was held in the morning had excellent conditions and sunshine. In both jumping rounds, however, Jarl Magnus Riiber emerged victoriously, even though clearer in the competition round.
Akito Watabe, his main competitor for the TRIPLE victory was only able to jump to 97 metres and 116.2 points and with Riiber’s 99 metres and 122.9 pointes, he gained an advantage of 27 seconds on the Japanese. On rank three, Ilkka Herola shone with a strong jump of 99 metres (108.1 points). The fast Finn started his race with a delay of 59 seconds and also fast German Fabian Rießle had a jump of 99 metres and claimed starting position four with +1:14 to make up.
Johannes Lamparter was the best Austrian on position five (+1:19), Laurent Mühlethaler was sixth with a delay of +1:32 and again a group of Germans formed on positions 7 to 9: Terence Weber, Eric Frenzel and Vinzenz Geiger were starting with delays of +1:38, +1:44 and +1:58. Espen Bjørnstad was tenth but only able to show 93 metres today and was already two minutes and six seconds behind his teammate and leader.
Even though snow weather made the track quite slow and he had to go at it alone, Jarl Magnus Riiber celebrated a secure start - finish victory. He never let the gap to the pursuers become smaller than the 33.3 seconds that divided him from Akito Watabe at the finish line.
The Japanese in turn was caught by a fast-approaching Ilkka Herola by the 3.6 km intermediate time. From then on the Japanese - Finn duo skied together and worked together but could not lessen the gap to a strong Jarl Magnus Riiber ahead. Herola, who had “one of the worst races of his career”, was not able to shake off Watabe and a little insecurity in picking the corridors to sprint led to him giving up on position two and settling for three in the end.
However, Herola and Watabe did manage to keep a gap of 20 seconds alive towards a trio of fast Germans Frenzel, Geiger and Rießle and Austrian Johannes Lamparter.
Even though Lamparter and Rießle had opened a small gap to the other two around halfway through the race, Geiger and Frenzel closed the gap again and in the end, it was both of them who were stronger on the last metres. The finished between +56.9 and 59.6 seconds after Riiber.
Jørgen Graabak was the fastest athlete on the track once more and skied to position eight from position 28. His time behind on Riiber is one minute and 48 seconds. He was followed by two teammates: Jens Lurås Oftebro and Espen Andersen, who completed the Top Ten.
Among the ten athletes who will not be able to start anymore in tomorrow’s final day of the Nordic Combined TRIPLE are Italy’s Aaron Kostner, Czech Republic’s Jan Vytrval, fantastic jumper Christian Deuschl (AUT) and teammate Marc Luis Rainer, Taylor Fletcher and Ben Loomis of the U.S. team and Finland’s Wille Karhumaa, as well as Japan’s Sora Yachi.
