Team Norway are the first Mixed Team Junior World Champions
Mar 06, 2020·Nordic Combined
Team Norway is the winner of the very first Mixed Team event ever held at FIS Nordic Junior World Ski Championships.
The necessary foundations were already laid in the jumping part. With a jump to 99 metres (116.2p.) Sebastian Østvold put his team in second position in the first group. The longest jump in that group went to Germany’s Christian Frank with a distance of 101 metres (118.3 p.). Marte Leinan Lund as the first woman held the Norwegian second place with a jump to 98 metres (106.2 p.), right behind young German Maria Gerboth (96.5 metres, 110.4 p.).
It was a very exciting head-to-head race between Germany and Norway also after the third group. However, this time the Scandinavians had the better jump. With an amazing jump to 101.5 metres (112.1p.), Gyda Westvold Hansen brought her team in the lead. Germany’s Jenny Nowak was not quite able to keep up with the Norwegian and landed on 92.5 metres (94.9 p.). A jump on 89 metres (93.1 p.) by Andreas Skoglund was enough to keep the Norwegian team in the lead. Especially because David Mach had a rather short jump on 78 metres (75.1 p.) in difficult wind conditions, which meant an advantage of 29 seconds for the Norwegians.
Surprisingly, the third place after jumping went to the Russian team with Eduard Zhirnov, Glafira Noskova, Alexandra Glazunova and Aleksandr Milanin, +0:58 seconds behind Norway.
The Norwegian team showed a very strong performance on the cross-country track as well. All of the four competitors where racing quite a lonely race and hardly let the other nations get any closer. In the end, Team Norway celebrated a clear start-finish-victory and crowned themselves the first Junior World Champion in the Nordic Combined Mixed Team event.
Also the Germans were able to keep the second position throughout the race and claimed a silver medal in front of their excited home crowd. The fight for third place got very exciting though. While the Russian team was not able to show the same performance as on the hill, silver medalist in the Individual competition Johannes Lamparter was able to bring his team onto the third place after the first exchange. Ayane Miyazaki and Anju Nakamura once again showed a very strong cross-country performance and brought the Japanese team closer to the Austrians. Italy’s Daniela Dejori was not quite able to keep up with Nakamura and had to let her go.
After the last exchange, Austria’s Manuel Einkemmer and Japan’s Kodai Kimura skied together throughout the race. Strong cross-country skier Einkemmer was not able to show his strength on the skinny skis today and wasn’t able to get rid of Kimura. At the last climb Kimura turned on the turbo and was able to put a few metres between himself and the Austrian and did not let Einkemmer get any closer until the finish line.
Austria finished fourth, Italy fifth, Russia sixth, the USA improved rank eleven after the jumping part to rank seven, Slovenia was eighth, the Czech Republic finished ninth, Estonia tenth and Finland eleventh.
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