Norway wins historic Mixed Team event
Jan 07, 2022·Nordic Combined
Team Norway is the winner of the first ever Mixed Team event in the World Cup history of Nordic Combined.
The Norwegians were already in the lead after the Ski Jumping round in Val di Fiemme (ITA) this morning.
In sunny but cold conditions at the HS 106 in Predazzo, Norway showed another strong team performance this morning.
Jens Luraas Oftebro (101 m), Mari Leinan Lund (95 m), Joergen Graabak (92.5 m) and Gyda Westvold Hansen (98.5 m) collected a total of 122.6 points and were in the lead after the Ski Jumping round.
Rank 2 was taken by team Austria, who was in the lead for a long time, before the Norwegians in the yellow bibs took over.
Martin Fritz (98 m), Annalena Slamik (96.5 m), Lukas Greiderer (100 m) and Lisa Hirner (89.5 m) had only a small backlog of 3 seconds on the leaders from Norway with 121.8 points.
Team Japan placed third with 119.2 points, after being in the lead after the first group. Yoshito Watabe (101.5 m), Yuna Kasai (95 m), Akito Watabe (96 m) and Anju Nakamura (91.5 m) went into the cross-country race 14 seconds after the leaders from Norway.
The 15 kilometer race (2x 2.5 km, 2x 5km) took place in Lago di Tesero in the afternoon.
Oftebro and Fritz contested the race together at the beginning, before the Austrian was able to pull away on the last climb. Before handing over to his teammate Slamik, he was able to run up a lead from Norway.
During this time, Watabe lost 1 minute to the leaders, so that Japan had to say goodbye to their hopes on the podium early on.
Meanwhile, Cindy Haasch showed a strong performance for Team Germany. The 17-year-old shortened the gap to the leaders from 34.1 seconds to 3.5 seconds when she handed over to Jenny Nowak.
Gyda Westvold Hansen, who had taken over Lund from Leinan on 4th place, started a brilliant race to catch up and brought Norway back on course for victory.
Joergen Graabak confidently defended the lead and finished the race for the Norwegians in first place after 40:55.5 min.
Austria secured the second place 10.5 seconds behind, ahead of Team Germany in third place (+ 23.9 seconds).
