COC: Norway's Sindre Ure Soetvik wins in Ruka

By Ari Kairala.

Tricky wind conditions that affected the first Continental Cup competition in Ruka on Saturday and also continued to mix up the schedule of the second competition on Sunday. Down in the stadium area the condition were calm and perfect but up on the hill jumping hill, the the wind was blowing strongly. The Ski jumping part of the competition was meant to take place at 10.00 AM but was postponed to start at 12.00. When the conditions stayed unchanged at mid-day, the jury decided to cancel the ski-jumping round and use the Provisional Competition Round (PCR), that was completed in a better weather on Friday.

In Friday’s PCR longest jump was set by Hisaki Nagamine of Japan, who landed at a distance of 137 meters. Second was Norwegian Sindre Ure Søtvik who started into the corss-country race 32 seconds behind Nagamine after making a jump of 134 meters. The third starter was Maximilian Pfordte of Germany, one minute and 22 seconds after leader. Pfordte’s jump in PCR was 124 meters long.

The 10 kilometre cross-country race was held on Sunday afternoon in nice -7 degrees Celsius winter weather. The competition finished in a dramatic way, when Harald Lemmerer of Austria crossed the finish line with Norwegian Sindre Ure Søtvik behind him. Lemmerer had blocked Søtvik's way on the final straight by changing the lanes and was disqualified by jury for this. So the winner of the day was Sindre Ure Søtvik with a race time of 28:12.9. Second was Tomaz Druml of Austria 16.4 seconds after Søtvik. Yesterday’s second-placed Martin Fritz of Austria was now on the third place after crossing the finish line with a time behind of 52.3 seconds.

The Best ski jumper of Friday’s PCR, Hisaki Nagame from Japan, finished sixth, 1 minute and 8.8 seconds behind the winner.

After the price-giving ceremony Martin Fritz told that he was really happy with his weekend in Ruka, althought he had some problems on the hill: ”I had some little problems on the hill. I don’t know why. I had a good shape when I came here but my jumps here were really bad. I was really happy that I had the fifth place after ski jumping. The cross country race was so hard for me because I was so tired after yesterday. Im really happy that I reached the third place”.

Tomaz Druml was also happy about his results: ”In general, it was good weekend. The PCR was so tricky because of the tail wind, so I was happy to make such a good jump and started today from the sixth postition. I performed really well today on skis – I skipped the race yesterday, so I was really fresh. I tried to catch this guy (points to Soetvik) but in the end he was faster, so I have to congratulate him”.

Søtvik also felt, that the PCR was hard: ”The conditions were pretty difficult. Tail wind and little bit of everything but I managed to get good speed, so I could fly out of the hill and in the end my jump was pretty good. My cross country condition was better today than yesterday, so I’m really happy. It was a good competition for me”.