Athlete of the week: Jakob Lange & Julian Schmid (GER)

It was a thrilling neck-and-neck race between Julian Schmid and Jakob Lange this past Sunday afternoon at the FIS Nordic Combined Continental Cup in Park City/Utah. The two Germans were fighting for the win until the very last meters. In the end it was Schmid, who crossed the finish line 0.1 seconds ahead of his teammate.

Reason enough to name both of them “Athlete of the week” this time.

Lange, who had won all three events in Park City / Soldier Hollow last season, was able to continue his winning stroke in the first competition 2020/21 on Friday. With an outstanding cross-country performance, he was able to close the 58-seconds-gap to the leader already in the first lap and left no doubt that he would be the man to beat this weekend.

No wonder that the 25-year-old also won the cross-country part of the Mass Start competition the following day. But then it was the hour of Schmid. The young German, who had been only 5.5 points behind his teammate after cross-country, landed a jump on 96m that Lange wasn’t able to beat. In the end Schmid celebrated his first ever Continental Cup victory, followed by Lange on rank two.

The third competition promised even more excitement. While Schmid started the cross-country race from rank five and with a disadvantage of 44 seconds, Lange was 10th and had to make up 1:08 minute. Both Germans once again demonstrated their cross-country strength, causing this incredibly close result already mentioned in the introduction.

Side fact: because of too much wind on the day of the Mass Start competition, the jumping round had to be postponed to Sunday, which was why Schmid was able to celebrate two victories within one day.

After Lange was part of the German team at the Viessmann FIS Nordic Combined World Cup in Ruka, Schmid will get his chance in Ramsau next weekend. It will definitely be interesting to see if the two of them will be able to continue their neck-and-neck race throughout the season.

Jakob Lange: “To be honest, I was a little bit surprised about how well I did on the cross-country course. Two weeks ago at the Viessmann FIS Nordic Combined World Cup in Ruka my cross-country shape was quite bad. After spending hundreds of hours on the bike this past summer, I suppose I just needed a few more intense sessions to find my strength back. For me it was pretty easy to make up my disadvantage within one lap. Especially in the last race the leading group really went low speed. It was a mistake to stay with them, instead of continuing to go my own pace. I took the chance of a finish sprint, which is never a good idea against Julian, who’s very strong at sprinting. That’s probably how I lost the race”.

Julian Schmid: “My expectations for the upcoming World Cup competitions in Ramsau aren’t that high because the past week was very hard. I’ll now try to recover at home as good as possible, before heading to Austria. Of course it is my goal to show good jumps, race fast and end up with two good results.”