COC-M: Norway continues to dominate events in Ruka
Jan 13, 2019·Nordic Combined
There was no beating the Norwegian athletes at the Continental Cup in Ruka - even when two events were held on one day. Two days of difficult winds meant the organisers had to get creative with the schedule planning and finally resulted in a Mass Start event with the race on Saturday and the jumping round early on Sunday, followed by a Team Event in the new format with cross-country distances of 5, 2.5, 2.5 and 5 km.
Austria’s Bernhard Flaschberger was the fastest athlete in the Mass Start race and conquered the 10 km distance in 26:44. He was followed by Jakob Lange (GER) and teammate Thomas Jöbstl, who finished one and seven seconds later. Local hero Wille Karhumaa ranked fourth (+0.27) and USA’s Jared Shumate ended his race on the fifth position with a delay of 29 seconds.
The final round of jumping had the successful Norwegian athletes come back with full force: Leif Torbjørn Næsvold was the most complete athlete with his seventh place finish in the race and a jump of 122.5 metres, which gave him a point total of 93.3 and the second victory of the weekend. Teammate Sindre Ure Søtvik only finished the race on the 18th position but a 129.5 metre jump helped him to climb the result list all the way to the second place (82.7 p.). Harald Riiber showed 113 metres and improved to the podium as well. Again, the Norwegian team had a quadruple victory to show for as youngster Simen Kvarstad jumped to 121 metres and the fourth position.
The rest of the Top Ten ranks went to Germany’s David Welde, Thomas Jöbstl (AUT), Luis Lehnert (GER), Simen Tiller (NOR), Ryota Yamamoto (JPN) and Aleksander Skoglund (NOR).
In the following Team Event, Riiber, Tiller, Næsvold and Søtvik showed a convincing performance on the jumping hill again (129, 119, 126 and 122 metres) and with a total of 110.4 points, the team had a two minute and 19 second advantage on the second team, Japan. Germany followed at +2:30 and Austria was fourth with a starting time of +2:44.
In the race, this was enough to comfortably finish the race one minute and five seconds ahead of Team Germany. Martin Hahn, Julian Schmid, David Welde and Jakob Lange improved their intermediate position to the second place and kept Team Austria at bay by only 0.8 seconds in the end. Japan finished fourth, Finland fifth and Russia sixth and China seventh.
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