Viacheslav Barkov wins Universiade gold for Russia

Russian Viacheslav Barkov has won the first of three Universiade events in the Kazakh city of Almaty. Barkov decided the Individual Gundersen event 10 km in his favour by finishing 1 second ahead of Poland’s Adam Cieslar. Cieslar’s teammate Pawel Slowiok claimed the bronze medal (+7.8 sec).

Japan’s Go Yamamoto reigned supreme on the jumping hill, showing the only jump longer than 100 metres with his 102 metre effort. 128.6 points gave him a head start of 22 seconds on Germany’s Tobias Simon. (99.5 m; 123.1 p.). Cieslar held the third place at the intermediate point of the event (95.5 m; 114.5 p.). Winner Barkov started his cross-country race from the fourth position and had to contend with a delay of 58 seconds at the start.

Cieslar and Barkov left the start only four second apart and remained close for the duration of the race. Fast skier Pawel Slowiok started with a disadvantage of one minute and 19 seconds but the fastest cross-country time of 23:15.3 helped him to narrow the the gap to the leaders and edge out Yamamoto, Simon and David Welde for the medal ranks. The German had to be satisfied with the fourth position, jumping winner Yamamoto finally ended up on position five.