COCM: Braud and Gerard with double victory
Aug 31, 2018·Nordic Combined
Francois Braud and Antoine Gerard made it a double victory for the French team at the last of three competition days in Germany’s Klingenthal venue. World Championship medallist Braud captured the victory by 8.2 seconds and held Friday’s winner Antoine Gerard at bay. Poland’s Pawel Slowiok repeated his career-best third place performance of yesterday’s event and finished 15.9 seconds after Braud.
As no jumping was possible in the morning, Thursday’s Provisional Competition Round had to be used, which had the best end of Estonian Kristjan Ilves. Ilves had showed a jump of 131 metres, which gave him 126.7 points and a six-second head start on yesterday’s winner Franz-Josef Rehrl. He had landed at 135 metres (125.3 p.). German athlete Anton Schluetter was third with 128 metres and a time disadvantage of eight seconds.
Braud held the eighth position and had to make up 40 seconds to the top athletes. Teammate Gerard, who is known for fast skiing performances, started from position 18 and had to contend with one minute and 18 seconds of delay. Pawel Slowiok, equally impressive on the skinny skis, started only two seconds behind him and so the two athletes were able to work together to fight their disadvantage. In the end, Gerard had the second-fastest and Slowiok the fourth-fastest time but they were no match for Francois Braud.
Yesterday’s winner Franz-Josef Rehrl had to be satisfied with rank four, Slovenia’s Vid Vrhovnik set a career-best fifth place and Laurent Muhlethaler completed a great French result with rank six. Positions seven to ten went to Espen Bjørnstad, Marjan Jelenko, Kristjan Ilves and fastest skier Paul Gerstgraser who turned rank 49 into a Top Ten position.
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