COC-M: Lars Ivar Skaarset victorious in Planica (SLO)
Feb 01, 2020·Nordic Combined
Lars Ivar Skaarset claimed his next FIS Continental Cup win in Planica (SLO). The Norwegian followed his famous teammate Jarl Magnus Riiber’s style and set himself up in the best possible position after the jumping part of the event.
138.5 metres meant a 24 second head start on teammate Sindre Ure Søtvik, who jumped to 135.5 metres. Simen Tiller made a Norwegian triple jumping win perfect with 130 metres but started his race with the considerable delay of exactly one minute.
Other Top Ten jumpers were Christian Deuschl, Otto Niittykoski, Piotr Kudzia, Rok Jelen, Alexander Pashaev, Nathaniel Mah and Maximilian Pfordte, who all started between +1:11 and +1:42 after Skaarset.
In the race, the 18th fastest time was enough for Skaarset to win but the Norwegian could not have been much slower, as Germany’s Jakob Lange showed a tour-de-force race and skied through the field from position 20. Of a delay of one minute and 57 seconds, exactly 8.8 seconds were left at the finish line. With this second place, Lange is also back in the green bib of the Continental Cup leader.
Austria’s Paul Gerstgraser showed a similarly great performance on the skinny skis and improved his 31st rank after jumping to the third place. He finished +35.2 after Skaarset and beat out Czech Republic’s Jan Vytrval by 3.3 seconds. Veteran Taylor Fletcher skied from position 42 to rank 5, Fabio Obermeyr Justin Moczarski, Arttu Mäkiaho, Edgar Vallet and Luis Lehnert completed the Top Ten.
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