Jarl Magnus Riiber claims his first Nordic Combined TRIPLE trophy
Feb 02, 2020·Nordic Combined
Jarl Magnus Riiber won his first Nordic Combined TRIPLE in his typical fashion: with strong ski jumping, strong racing and dominantly. Jørgen Graabak and Vinzenz Geiger duelled for the second rank and the Norwegian outsmarted and outsprinted his German competitor after entering the stadium first. In the end, Riiber won 50.2 seconds ahead of his teammate Graabak, who, in turn, beat Geiger by 0.4 seconds.
The wind had some influence on the last ski jumping round of the Nordic Combined TRIPLE, as a bad weather front moved into the Alps and also to Seefeld. For Jarl Magnus Riiber, changing conditions meant that he only had the fifth best jump of the round with 101 metres and 125.9 points.
Vinzenz Geiger climbed up one place in the ranking and was the only athlete in the entire round with slight head wind. He used this opportunity to fly to 104.5 metres and collected 122.9 points for his jump. ncluding his -17.4 points from the two previous days, he started his hunt for the TRIPLE trophy with a delay of one minute and 22 seconds at the start line.
Both athletes, Riiber and Geiger, had been suffering from slight colds in the last days and now it came down to who felt the fittest for the long final race of the mini tour. Geiger had the advantage of being able to ski in a group as Akito Watabe jumped to rank three and with only 0.1 points less than Geiger, he started together with the German. Jørgen Graabak was only two second behind and also Jens Lurås Oftebro and Espen Bjørnstad were in the mix at +1:26 and +1:29.
With starting times over two minutes behind, the next group of athletes contained four-time TRIPLE champion Eric Frenzel (+2:08), red bib bearer Ilkka Herola (+2:12), local hero Franz-Josef Rehrl (+2:24) and Japanese Ryota Yamamoto (+2:31).
The big question before the race was if Graabak and Geiger could possible work together to topple Riiber or would the Norwegian team spirit prevail and the German be on his own to try and close the gap to the leader?
In the end, neither scenario became reality. Geiger seemed to be more impaired by his cold than his rival Riiber and so the German hung back in the pursuing group consisting of Watabe, Graabak, Oftebro and Bjørnstad and just tried to hang on. Even though Graabak tested his adversaries multiple times and opened smaller gaps of a few metres a number of times, Geiger paid attention and always closed the gaps again. Graabak did not push hard to close the gap to Riiber at the head of the field.
So Riiber skied lap after lap and was not challenged by any athlete in the pursuing group but strong ski jumper Bjørnstad was the first having to drop from the pursuers at the 3.7 km point. He finally finished ninth. The next athlete to drop from the group was Akito Watabe who, like Bjørnstad before him, was caught by the fast second pursuing group helmed by Ilkka Herola and Eric Frenzel.
Jens Lurås Oftebro hung on to Graabak and Geiger for dear life but lost contact to the two fast skiers after the last intermediate time. Graabak was tactically smart to enter the stadium fast and used the momentum to have the decisive last centimetres over Geiger.
Oftebro saved the fourth place for himself, Eric Frenzel beat Ilkka Herola to rank five and Lukas Greiderer was the best Austrian on rank seven. Akito Watabe, Espen Bjørnstad and Fabian Rießle completed the Top Ten.
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