COC: Ilves takes second Eisenerz victory

by Martha Tscheliesnig

On Sunday the weather was even better than the day before with air temperatures of 3 °C in the morning. No clouds were seen along the valley of Ramsau in Eisenerz. Like on the first day of the Continental Cup Nordic Combined, both parts of the competition went without any incidents or injuries. Many spectators were watching the competition, lending strong support to the Austrian home team.

Kristjan Ilves from Estonia won the jumping event once more, one after having convinced the spectators of his abilities in ski jumping yesterday. He jumped 106.0 meters and with 130.5 points, he had 24 seconds of head start on 17 year-old Florian Dagn of Austria. Dagn shared the second place with teammate Christian Deutschl. Their distance was 103.5 meters each. On place 4 was the another Austrian Philip Beikircher who jumped 102.5 meters.

Yesterday's second placed Bernhard Flaschberge was not able to do a good jump as he hoped. To the disappointment of everybody, he was only ranked 32nd.

Ilves was able to make use of his start number one for the race to bring some distance between him and his competitors, which he held for the whole duration of the race. His ranking in the cross country skiing time was tenth but because of his lead he was able to keep all pursuers at bay and claim the second victory on as many days. In the end, Ilves finished 17.9 seconds ahead of Tomaz Druml. Druml had been sixth in the ski jumping competition in the morning and fought his way on to the podium.

The German David Welde, Saturday’s number five, took the remaining spot on the podium, +23.6 seconds behind Ilves. Despite his start number 32, Bernhard Flaschberger was able to catch up and take the fourth position but today, the fastest man on the track was Italy's Armin Bauer again who improved rank 47 to an incredible eighth position.

Thomas Kjelbotn from Norway claimed position five, Michael Dünkel from Germany was sixth.. On Saturday he had been 7th in the overall ranking.