Geraghty-Moats and Lange swipe Park City weekend
Dec 16, 2019·Nordic Combined
There is no stopping Jakob Lange and Tara Geragthy-Moats. The German and the American also took the third victories of the Park City weekend and each leave the USA with 300 points and as undisputed leaders in the Continental Cup standings.
Geraghty-Moats beat Gyda Westvold Hansen (NOR) by 43.7 seconds at the finish line, Jakob Lange had an advantage of 34.4 seconds on Paul Gerstgraser (AUT).
Geraghty-Moats returns to ski jumping strength
As maybe the most important development for Geraghty-Moats, her ski jumping performance returned to a very good level after her crash in Lillehammer. 87 metres (110 p.) gave the American the jumping win and a head start of 18 seconds on Italy’s Veronica Gianmoena (85 m; 105.6 p.). Russia’s Summer Grand Prix winner Stefaniya Nadymova also stepped up her performance to take the shared second position in the in jumping ranking with the same distance and number of points.
Gyda Westvold Hansen returned to competition after her crash in the trial round in Saturday but only had the fourth-best jump (87 m; 104.8 p.) She started her race at +0:21, followed by Canada’s Taylor Henrich at +0:22.
In the race, Geragthy-Moats was able to take it a bit slower but finished the course in a time of 15:23.7. In terms of the skiing time, she was only beaten by teammate and new Nordic Combined athlete Kathleen O’Connell. The cross-country skier needed 15:18.7 to complete the course but still finished last after a jump of only 45.5 metres.
With the second-fastest skiing time, Westvold Hansen advanced through the field to claim her second second place of the weekend. Stefaniya Nadymova returned to the podium on position three (+0:56), Daniela Dejori skied to position four. Also on start in her first-ever Nordic Combined competition was ski jumper Nina Lussi. Lussi had jumped to the eighth position but was the slowest skier on the track, which had her fall back to the final eleventh position.
Lange keeps up impressive level
Also on the men’s side, Jakob Lange did not drop his level compared to the two previous days. With the second place in ski jumping (95.5 m; 129.6 p.) and the third-fastest cross-country time, Lange celebrated another clear victory.
Christian Deuschl was the best jumper on Park City’s hill once again with 99 metres and 133.3 points and opened his race with a head start of 15 seconds on Lange. USA’s Ben Loomis was third with 95 metres and 127.5 points and started with a delay of 23 seconds, followed by Rok Jelen (+0:32) and Grant Andrews (+0:33).
The race track with it’s altitude favoured the strong skiers and so Paul Gerstgraser shot to the second place with the fastest cross-country time of 15:15.0 for the 10 km. He improved from position 16 and brought Norway’s Leif Torbjørn Næsvold with him from position ten to three. Næsvold finished six seconds after Gerstgraser. Sindre Ure Søtvik, Ben Loomis and Jan Vytrval were a trio on ranks four to six, all finishing within a minute of the winner.
The Top Ten were completed by Raffaele Buzzi, Lukas Danek, Wendelin Thannheimer and Jared Shumate.
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