Akito Watabe joins the World Cup winner’s club 2019/20
Mar 01, 2020·Nordic Combined
After the wind contributed his part to a difficult jumping round earlier in the morning, Akito Watabe prevailed in a nailbiter of a cross-country race in Lahti to join the elite circle of World Cup winners 2019/20. He crossed the finish line 2.9 seconds ahead of this year’s “eternal second” Jørgen Graabak and 7.9 seconds ahead of the other podium regular, Vinzenz Geiger.
Japan’s Akito Watabe was the happy winner after a windy competition round, which had swept some of the very good jumpers to positions a long way down in the result list, among them Norwegians Espen Bjørnstad and World Cup leader Jarl Magnus Riiber. Bjørnstad’s system was out of balance after the take off and he was carried far to the right side of the jumping hill and landed at 113 metres, while Riiber’s aggressive style of jumping was also not stable in today’s conditions and his flight ended at 115.5 metres already.
Bjørnstad began his race from position 14 with a delay of +1:32, while Riiber ranked 16th with a time disadvantage of +1:40. He was in good company as local hero Ilkka Herola ended up between the two Norwegians on position 15 and started four seconds ahead of Riiber.
The German team had more reasons to smile with Fabian Rießle celebrating his fourth place and promising starting position with a delay of +0:51 seconds on Watabe. Terence Weber continued his strong performances on rank six (+0:58) and Vinzenz Geiger and Eric Fenzel were eighth and ninth (+1:02) and (+1:13). Norway’s Jørgen Graabak had reason to celebrate as well and was also in the hunt for the day’s victory starting from position seven (+0:59).
Next to Watabe’s top jump of 127 metres (120 p.), the other two top jumps of the day came from Jens Lurås Oftebro (126.5 m; 117.8 p.) and Martin Fritz (121 m; 109.1 p.). While Oftebro began his race together with Watabe (+0:09), Martin Fritz chased the podium with a delay of +0:44 seconds.
When Akito Watabe and Jens Lurås Oftebro left the start line at 14:45 local time, they probably did not expect to still be a leading duo by the 8.6 km point of the race but his was exactly what happened in Lahti today. Watabe lead for long stretches of the race but exchanged the lead with Oftebro as well to help both athletes conserve energy.
Behind the two, predictably, a bigger group of athletes banded together to start the pursuit. Germany’s Fabian Rießle was the leader of this group on the first two laps before exchanging the lead with Vinzenz Geiger. Jørgen Graabak, Eric Fenzel, Martin Fritz, Terence Weber and Ryota Yamamoto were part of the group as well, until Yamamoto was the first to drop from the group in the third lap, followed by Weber.
These two were quickly overtaken by a fast-aproaching Ilkka Herola and Jarl Magnus Riiber, who both made up a lot of ground from further behind. Ultimately, Herola proved to be the stronger cross-country skier and Riiber had to continue by his own devices. While Herola continued to push hard, two actors further in front also made their moves on the last lap: Carried by perfect skis, Akito Watabe got away from a visibly struggling Jens Lurås Oftebro on the last lap and evaded capture by the fast pursuers until the finish line. Oftebro was caught on the last uphill by Jørgen Graabak, who accelerated and also overtook Vinzenz Geiger in the process. Geiger had been in the lead of the pursuers until the 8.6 km mark.
While Watabe set his first season victory and 18th in total, Graabak claimed his seventh second place this year. Vinzenz Geiger was the undisputed third before Oftebro secured a fourth place for himself, +12.7 seconds after Watabe. He beat Eric Frenzel and Fabian Rießle, who duelled for the fifth and sixth positions in a photo finish with the better end for Rießle. Martin Fritz was seventh, Ilkka Herola delighted the audience with rank 8, Manuel Faißt was ninth and even with today’s very unlucky course of events, Jarl Magnus Riiber still finished inside the Top Ten with position 10.
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