WSC: Norway wins historic Mixed Team gold
Feb 26, 2023·Nordic Combined
Team Norway wrote history today by becoming the first World Champions in a Nordic Combined Mixed Team event.
The started difficult, because fresh snow that fell overnight caused major problems at the hill in the morning.
First, the trial round had to be canceled due to the dull snow conditions. The competition started with a little delay, but after the falls of Alessandro Pittin, who had already fallen in the trial, and experienced Akito Watabe, the jury also stopped this competition attempt.
After the re-grooming of the hill, a restart was carried out at 12:30 CET.
Ida Marie Hagen (87 m), Jens Luraas Oftebro (99.5 m), Jarl Magnus Riiber (100 m) and Gyda Westvold Hansen (96.5 m) from Norway showed the strongest team performance and were in the lead after the Ski Jumping round.
Rank 2 was taken by team Japan, who was in the lead for three groups, before the Norwegians took over.
Yuna Kasai (94 m), Akito Watabe (92 m), Ryota Yamamoto (99 m) and Haruka Kasai (89 m) had only a small backlog of 5 seconds on the leaders from Norway with 456.5 points.
Team Germany placed third, 25 seconds behind, with Jenny Nowak (88 m), Vinzenz Geiger (94 m), Julian Schmid (94.5 m) and Nathalie Armbruster (91 m) collecting a total of with 436.6 points.
The 15 kilometer race (2x 2.5 km, 2x 5km) started in the afternoon, with another strong performance from Norway.
Jens Luraas Oftebro went into the course first and showed his strength on cross-country skis, by building up his lead over Japan already to 20.2 sec after 1.2 km.
Meanwhile, Yamamoto was caught by Vinzenz Geiger, who put Germany in second place for the first exchange.
Austria's Stefan Rettenegger also passed Japan and handed over to Annalena Slamik, 34 seconds behind Norway. Ida Marie Hagen handed over to Gyda Westvold Hansen with a 41.5 second lead over Nathalie Armbruster, who started third for Germany.
After the last exchange, Jarl Magnus Riiber brought Norway's historic gold home safely, while Julian Schmid (+47.8 sec) secured silver for Germany. Johannes Lamparter (+ 1min) confidently won bronze for Austria after stepping in for Franz-Josef Rehrl, who fell ill overnight.
Ski Jumping Results: WSC, Mixed Team NH/15km, Planica, 26.2.23
Overall Results: WSC, Mixed Team NH/15km, Planica, 26.2.23
