Greiderer & Lamparter fly to first-ever Austrian Team Sprint gold
Mar 06, 2021·Nordic Combined
Lukas Greiderer and newly minted World Champion Johannes Lamparter were unbeatable also in today's Team Sprint and claimed the first-ever World Championship gold medal in the format for Austria. The crossed the finish line a clear 39.6 seconds ahead of Espen Andersen and Jarl Magnus Riiber of Team Norway, who claimed silver. Team Germany with Fabian Rießle and Eric Frenzel outsprinted Ryota Yamamoto and Akito Watabe of Team Japan for Bronze (+1:07.4).
The fight already began on the jumping hill in the morning when Team Japan captured an expected lead. Two beautiful jumps of 136 metres gave Akito Watabe and Ryota Yamamoto the lead with 296 points. However, after Johannes Lamparter’s World Champion title from Thursday, the Austrian team continued to be on fire. Lamparter hit another amazing jump and flew to 140.5 metres. Bolstered by teammate Lukas Greiderer’s 133 metres (295 p.), the Austrians were just two seconds behind the Japanese on the start line and had the ideal position to go for another gold.
Norway’s Espen Andersen delivered a solid jump of 133.5 metres but much to everyone’s surprise, Jarl Magnus Riiber did not have the perfect jump int he competition round after winning the trial round just 30 minutes earlier. With only 130.5 metres, the Norwegian team had to contend with a delay of 34 seconds, which gave them a steep task for the cross-country race.
The host nation of Germany did also not have the breakthrough on the hill on the last competition day and even though Eric Frenzel added 132 metres to the tally, Fabian Rießle landed at 123 metres already. For the track, this meant a start delay of one minute and 12 seconds for the local heroes. The young French team of Matteo Baud and Laurent Mühlethaler followed ten seconds later after jumping to 123 and 127.5 metres and the “Fast Finns”, Eero Hirvonen and Ilkka Herola were one minute and 43 seconds delayed at the start line after showing 120.5 and 127 metres.
In the cross-country race, Austria remained untouchable. Both Lukas Greiderer and Johannes Lamparter skied at a strong pace. While Team Japan managed to hang on for the first two laps, Ryota Yamamoto dropped back to a 10-second delay after his second lap.
Also Team Norway in third position struggled to make up a significant amount of time on the Austrians and the distance remained between 25 and 35 seconds for most of the race. After 7.5 km kilometres of the race, Andersen and Riiber had caught Team Japan and also here, Yamamoto and Watabe tried to hang on for a while but ultimately had to concede defeat. At the 10.5 km point, the Japanese duo was 15 seconds behind Norway and had to cast worried eyes behind themselves, as Team Germany came closer and closer.
Much to the frustration of the volunteers on location and the German spectators in front of their TV sets, Eric Frenzel and Fabian Rießle also had to recognize that making ground on Team Austria was impossible today and also Norway remained out of reach. On the last two legs of the race, the bronze medal wandered within their sights, however.
Ryota Yamamoto fought for his life on his last lap and managed to keep Fabian Rießle behind him but both teams exchanged at the same time and a dramatic last lap of the race followed. Even though Akito Watabe tried his utmost, he had to, like so many times before in his career, concede defeat to Eric Frenzel on the last metres of the race. In the end, he finished two seconds after the Germans who claimed bronze.
Strong skiers Eero Hirvonen and Ilkka Herola were not able to make up a lot of time on the top four teams but overtook all of the other nations and ended up in fifth, +1:42.7 after the winners. The young French team was sixth (+2:06.5), the Czech Republic was seventh (+4:10.6), Estonia eighth (+4:30.6) and the USA ninth (+4:46.4). Slovenia, Poland, the Ukraine, RSF and Kazakhstan were overlapped and ranked 10th to 14th.
