Johannes Rydzek wins first Individual of the summer
Aug 31, 2018·Nordic Combined
Johannes Rydzek and Mario Seidl fought until the last metres but in the end, the German celebrated the first individual victory of the summer 2018. Only 0.3 seconds separated the Rydzek and the Austrian at the finish line. Local hero Eric Frenzel had the crowd roaring for his third place, +0:24 seconds behind his teammate.
Franz-Josef Rehrl repeated his amazing jumping performance of the previous day and had a narrow lead of 2 seconds going out in the track after landing at 99 metres (120.2 p.). Eric Frenzel followed suit with a jump that was finally on the level the German superstar appreciated. Frenzel also showed 99 metres and started two seconds after the leader, same time as Russia's Ernest Yahin. Yahin achieved a point total of 119.6 points, only 0.1 points less than Frenzel.
Mario Seidl and Johannes Rydzek set themselves up promisingly as well, starting their races with delays of eight and twelve seconds. Akito and Yoshito Watabe claimed ranks seven and right (+0:22 and +0:25) and the second local hero, Terence Weber only had a delay of 20 seconds to overcome on the track with another strong jumping performance that rewarded him with the intermediate sixth position.
In the race, the foursome consisting of Johannes Rydzek, Franz-Josef Rehrl, Mario Seidl and Eric Frenzel took charge of things right from the start and the group was only split up in the second half of the race when Franz-Josef Rehrl and Eric Frenzel slowly lost contact to Seidl and Rydzek.
The Austrian and the German, however, showed no signs of stopping and so a finish line sprint had to decide the winner. In the end, Rydzek was the stronger one, as was teammate Frenzel, who beat Franz-Josef Rehrl to the third place by a good ten seconds in the end.
A bigger pursuing group with Ilkka Herola, Akito Watabe and Fabian Rießle was not able to close the gap to the first four spots and so Rießle, Fritz, Herola, Yoshito Watabe, Vinzenz Geiger, Terence Weber and Akito Watabe had to satisfied with ranks five to ten.
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