Rießle delights German crowd and keeps on winning

Germany’s Fabian Rießle seems unstoppable right now and celebrated a back-to-back victory after his first triumph in Trondheim on Wednesday. The German crossed the finish line 12.2 seconds ahead of runner-up Eero Hirvonen, who also climbed onto the podium for the second time this week. Akito Watabe conquered yet another podium and extended his lead in the World Cup standings to 202 points by finishing 22.1 seconds after Rießle.

The ski jumping round ended with a surprise: Fabian Rießle, usually known as a very fast cross-country skier and lately also good ski jumper underlined his ambitions for his next World Cup victory and the second place in the World Cup standings with a fabulous jump of 139.5 metres and the jumping win. 143 points meant a head start of 21 seconds on Akito Watabe, who delivered 137 metres from one gate lower than Rießle and accumulated 137.7 points.

Finland’s Eero Hirvonen jumped to a top position as well with 142.5 metres, the longest jump of the day. He started his race 25 seconds after Rießle. The round was characterised by changing wind conditions and long jumps of the top athletes. In addition to the top three, great distances of 141, 138.5 and 139.5 metres also came from Mario Seidl, Go Yamamoto and Eric Frenzel, who claimed positions four to six and started between +0:31 and +0:41 seconds after Rießle.

In total, ten athletes jumped to starting times within the first minute of the race, including Johannes Rydzek, Manuel Faißt, Jan Schmid and Ilkka Herola. Athletes with weaker jumps were, surprisingly enough, Jarl Riiber, who only had 129 metres to show for and ranked 19th after the jumping part. In his second-but-last competition, luck was also not in favour of Jason Lamy Chappuis, who had by far the worst conditions of the round and only ranked 47th with 104 metres. He did not start in the cross-country race anymore.

Even though the pole position was uncharted territory for jumping winner Fabian Rießle, the German solved this new task masterfully and was never in danger of being caught by the pursuers and enjoyed the frenetic cheers by the large and boisterous crowd. While you could see the tiredness of a long competition week in all athletes, Akito Watabe and Eero Hirvonen worked together well to keep the tempo up.

Even if they were not able to catch Rießle, they succeeded in tiring out their own pursuers Johannes Rydzek and Fabian Rießle. While the four were almost skiing together at the 6.9 km mark, Hirvonen attacked on the last lap to open up a seven-second gap to Eric Frenzel and Akito Watabe. Probably also due to the increasing tiredness of the athletes, Johannes Rydzek fell on the last round and had to let fastest skier Ilkka Herola pass. Herola had narrowed a 56-second delay to 26.1 seconds at the finish, position five in the final results.

Watabe held off Frenzel on the last lap, so that the podium held a good mix of nations in the end. Local hero Frenzel had to be satisfied with the fourth place, Johannes Rydzek finished sixth. Jan Schmid was seventh, Mario Seidl eighth. Jørgen Graabak and Vinzenz Geiger fought for rank nine, which had to be decided in a photo finish with Graabak as the winner.