Rydzek stays on top in the Nordic Combined TRIPLE

Johannes Rydzek has also taken the second event of the Nordic Combined TRIPLE. Again, he wrestled down Eric Frenzel in a finish line sprint and finished one second ahead of his teammate. Samuel Costa had another amazing performance. The Italian again captured the third place and followed yesterday's third place with the second podium result of his career.

The results after the jumping event couldn’t have been tighter: Johannes Rydzek won the event with a 0.1 point lead on Bernhard Gruber and Samuel Costa who tied for the second intermediate place. 133.4 points for Rydzek after a 103.5 metre jump and 133.3 points for Gruber and Costa (both 106.5 m) meant all three athletes started at the same time in the 10 km cross-country race.

Eric Frenzel was in an excellent position to attack, just 4 seconds after the leading trio. Teammate Fabian Rießle was also overjoyed with his jump of 105 metres which meant an intermediate position six for the German and just 23 seconds to make up. Akito Watabe followed on position seven with +0:41.

The first four athletes worked together in a great way in the race, so that fast skier Fabian Rießle could not close the gap on Costa, Gruber, Frenzel and Rydzek. Frenzel and Rydzek alternated with the lead, while Gruber and Costa tried their best to match the pace of the German duo. This way, the leading group remained a foursome until the last lap. Frenzel tried to set his attacks earlier on not able to shake Rydzek, while Costa and Gruber had to let them go.

Frenzel and Rydzek battled it out on the finish straight one more time and like yesterday, the TRIPLE leader had the better end for himself. In the end 0.1 second separated the two Germans but this 0.1 seconds meant that the yellow bib of the World Cup leader went to Johannes Rydzek today.

Behind the two Germans, Samuel Costa claimed another podium position by beating World Champion Berni Gruber who had to be content with the fourth rank. Mario Seidl collected another fifth position and Rießle, Akito Watabe, David Pommer and Ilkka Herola completed the Top Ten together with Magnus Krog who moved up from position 19 to ten.