Athletes of the season: Watabe, Schmid, Rießle & Co.

Honouring one achievement over the other is always a slippery slope as all athletes contend with their different challenges, motivations and abilities. The same kind of effort that goes into winning a World Cup event, a title event or even the overall victory of a season can go into simply claiming World Cup points or performing to the best of one’s abilities.

This article is meant to honour all Nordic Combined performances of the season, from Akito Watabe’s glorious season to Viacheslav Barkov, Hidefumi Denda and Atte Korhonen, who ended the 2017/18 winter with exactly one World Cup point.

This is of course not meant to take anything away from Watabe’s fabulous performances, taking eight individual victories, an Olympic silver medal and, for the first time ever, the crystal globe of the overall winner - after six consecutive years on the overall podium. It took a lot of patience, dedicated work and mental toughness to overcome years of “fourth and second place syndrome” to finally claim his place at the very top of the winners list in Nordic Combined this year.

“With “233223”, my overall positions in the last year read like a phone number. I am so happy I can finally add a “1” to it”, an overjoyed Watabe commented in his customary humour at the last press conference of the season.

But also second-placed Jan Schmid should be given respect where respect is due. The Norwegian truly gave Watabe a run for his money and delivered his best season ever at age 34, after a tough struggle in the season before. Schmid added three more World Cup victories this year, bringing his total tally up to five, not to forget two more victories with the Norwegian team, as well as an Olympic team silver medal.

After losing his spot on the overall podium to Akito Watabe in the last race of the season last year, this last winter has probably also been cathartic for Germany’s Fabian Rießle, who stepped out of the shadow of his two successful teammates Eric Frenzel and Johannes Rydzek. An Olympic silver medal individually and gold with the team, as well as four season victories catapulted Rießle to the overall podium for the second time in his career and made him into the best German athlete of the season, an achievement in itself in a team as strong as Hermann Weinbuch’s success squad.

Of course Eric Frenzel and Johannes Rydzek cannot be missing in a list of the athletes of the season. The amount of strategic planning and meticulous execution that goes into being in top shape right in time to win the two most important individual events of the season in PyeongChang are nothing but impressive and a testament to the level of performance of these two outstanding athletes.

Hats off also to Jørgen Graabak, Eero Hirvonen, Jarl Magnus Riiber, Espen Andersen and Ilkka Herola for their Top Ten performances in the course of the winter and for the many breakthrough moments like first victories and podium positions for some of the younger athletes.

In the end, the cards will be reshuffled over the summer now and we cannot wait to see, who is going to amaze us with great performances next year - be that the big victories or the smaller, more personal successes.