Norway in a league of their own in Team Event in Oberstdorf
Jan 25, 2020·Nordic Combined
Norway set a dominant victory in the World Championship test event in Oberstdorf today. After stellar performances on the hill and track, Espen Bjørnstad, Jens Lurås Oftebro, Jørgen Graabak and Jarl Magnus Riiber crossed the finish line one minute and 34 seconds ahead of the runners-up from Germany. Fabian Rießle, Johannes Rydzek, Manuel Faißt and Vinzenz Geiger stormed to rank two from the intermediate fourth position, Team Japan (A. Watabe, R. Yamamoto, Nagai and Y. Watabe) took rank 3, +2:50.4 behind the Norwegians.
The Norwegian team demonstrated their full strength on the HS 137 Schattenbergschanze in the early morning and captured an impressive lead of one minute and 27 seconds for the 4x 5 km race on the new World Championship tracks in the cross-country stadium in Ried. Jens Oftebro, Jarl Riiber, Jørgen Graabak and Espen Bjørnstad jumped 136, 135.5, 130 and 134.5 metres and collected a total of 568.0 points for their efforts. Oftebro’s jump was worth 149.2 points for his team and the best jump of the day.
The next best team on the hill was Austria for whom especially Franz-Josef Rehrl showed an appealing jump of 128 metres (130 p.). In total, the team collected 502.4 points and were locked into an intense battle with the teams from Japan and Germany, who started their races six and 19 seconds after the Austrians. Ryota Yamamoto, Akito Watabe, Hideaki Nagai and Yoshito Watabe had a point total of 498.4 while Geiger, Rydzek, Rießle and Faißt claimed 488.4 points.
Within the German team it was mainly Fabian Rießle and Manuel Faißt who delighted the 2500 spectators, who had risen early in the morning to follow the ski jumping round. Rießle showed 131.5 metres, while Faißt set one of the top jumps of the round with 135 metres and 143.2 points.
Between the four teams fighting for the podium and the rest of the field, a big gap split the field in half. The Czech Republic claimed the intermediate rank five (+4:19), Finland followed in sixth (+5:17), the USA were seventh (+5:20), Italy was eighth (+5:34) and Russia ninth (+6:13).
While Team Norway was able to capitalise on their comfortable advantage and managed their pacing very well, it was full gas from the other teams in their fight to reduce the gap to the front and claim the podium spots. Pushed by a frenetic crowd of several thousand spectators, Fabian Rießle was the fastest skier on the track and completed his 5 kilometres in 11:58.5 on leg one.
On the second leg, the Austrian team ran into big difficulties with Bernhard Gruber, who had a very bad day on the track and struggled to just complete his 5 km leg. At the same time, young Japanese Ryota Yamamoto did a great job of following local hero Johannes Rydzek to the best of his abilities. While Gruber lost two minutes on the German team, Yamamoto was only 45 seconds behind at the third exchange and sent Hideaki Nagai on on the track.
Jørgen Graabak set the bar high for the pursuers on the third leg of the race and while Manuel Faißt could not make up any ground on the Norwegian, he just lost about 15 seconds and extended the gap to Japan to a whole minute. The anchor skiers were not able to change anything in the already considerably big gaps between the teams and so Norway only needed the cumulated fourth-fastest skiing time to set a very clear victory. In the end, the German team was only able to take in twelve seconds of the disadvantage they had at the start line. For Japan, the third place was only the third World Cup podium in a Team Event to date and a great success.
Behind the top team, Team Finland impressed with the skiing fastest times. Leevi Mutru, Wille Karhumaa, Ilkka Herola and Eero Hirvonen needed 50.03.1 to complete the 20 km of skiing and ranked fifth behind Austria in the final ranking. The second fastest team, Italy, was sixth, the Czech Republic seventh, the USA eighth and Russia ninth.
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