Jarl Magnus Riiber claims maiden Val di Fiemme victory
Jan 10, 2020·Nordic Combined
Jarl Magnus Riiber claimed his first-ever victory in Val di Fiemme in the first Individual Gundersen event of the weekend. After a strong cross-country race, Riiber celebrated a start - finish victory 26.6 seconds ahead of Ramsau winner Vinzenz Geiger. Jørgen Graabak continues his strong Val di Fiemme result sheet with a third place, finishing +27.7 behind Riiber.
Riiber continued his reign of the jumping hills also in Val di Fiemme and claimed the pole position of the race with a jump of 104.5 metres and a point total of 146.6 points. Espen Bjørnstad was second with 102 metres and 140.8 points and had 23 seconds to make up on his teammate. Austria’s Franz-Josef Rehrl started his race only one second later after jumping to 104 metres (140.7 p.).
Team Norway was strong again with three more athletes in the jumping Top Ten: Jens Lurås Oftbro was fourth (+0:36) and Jørgen Graabak was one of the top contenders for a podium position, as the strong cross-country skier likes the track and started his race with a delay of +0:49 seconds from rank five. He showed 100 metres (134.3.p.). Teammate Espen Andersen was also a member of the 100-metre club (101 m), and Andersen and Graabak both shared their fifth position with Japan’s Akito Watabe (101 m, 134.3 p.).
Martin Fritz, Yoshito Watabe and Vinzenz Geiger completed the jumping Top Ten. With a time disadvantage of one minute and 11 second, last year’s Val di Fiemme winner Geiger was still in the game, as was Germany’s Fabian Rießle, who started is race one second after Geiger. Johannes Rydzek was finally satisfied with his jumping performance and claimed position 19 with 95.5 metres and a time delay of one minute and 34 seconds, the same start time as Magnus Krog, who returned from an injury sustained before the season.
Jarl Riiber skied a strong race and even though the pursuers made up ground on the 22-year old in the first lap, Riiber kept the pace high enough to discourage any serious attempts to catch him. The pursuing group consisted of Jørgen Graabak, Espen Bjørnstad, Espen Andersen, Franz-Josef Rehrl, Jens Lurås Oftebro and Akito Watabe after the first lap but steadily grew when more athletes managed to close the gap.
By the 5 km point, Lukas Greiderer, Martin Fritz, Lukas Klapfer, Fabian Rießle and Vinzenz Geiger had joined the group and further tactical games opened up opportunities for Ilkka Herola, Eric Frenzel, Johannes Rydzek, Tomas Portyk, Johannes Lamparter and Terence Weber. They all skied together in a big group around one minute behind Riiber.
Vinzenz Geiger and Jørgen Graabak were not having the group dynamic on the last lap and started the fight for the podium in earnest on the last lap. They had quickly opened up a gap of eight seconds at the last intermediate time at 8.8 km. The sudden increase in speed also halved Riiber’s advantage but the Norwegian dominator did not let anybody endanger his victory anymore.
Coming on to the final stretch, Geiger had the better tactical movement and claimed his second place without a sprint, Graabak was third. Behind the podium athletes, Fabian Rießle and Johannes Rydzek sprinted for rank four with the better end for Rießle. Lukas Greiderer and Martin Fritz were sixth and seventh, Ilkka Herola, Eric Frenzel and Jens Oftebro closed out the Top Ten.
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