COC: Geraghty-Moats and Weber with repeat performances
Mar 13, 2021·Nordic Combined
Tara Geraghty-Moats and Terence Weber keep on winning in Nizhny Tagil, no matter if it is the ski jumping round first and the race second or the other way around.
Geragthy-Moats claimed her second victory in as many days with a total of 103.6 points in today’ Mass Start event. Russia’s Stefaniya Nadymova claimed the silver rank with 86.6 and just 0.6 points behind, Germany’s Maria Gerboth took her second podium with rank three.
On the men’s side, Weber won with 104.2 points, Lars Ivar Skaarset (NOR) was second with 95.7 and Germany’s David Mach claimed position three with 86.7 points.
Team USA was strong in both the women’s and men’s Mass Start races in Nizhny Tagil in the morning: Tara Geraghty-Moats and Taylor Fletcher tore through the field in an all-out storm for the finish line.
Russia’s Anastasia Goncharova tried hanging on to Geraghty-Moats but had to give up on this endeavour already early in the first lap. The American kept pushing hard until the finish line which she reached after 13 minutes and 57 seconds. Goncharova had a strong race as well but her pace dwindled in the end, so that a group of pursuers did not lose many seconds on her. The Russian finished at 14:52, nearly a minute after Geraghty-Moats. Lisa Hirner was back in the game after a bad jump had taken her out of contention on Friday and finished third, +0:57 seconds after the American, Germany’s Cindy Haasch was fourth +0:58 and teammate Maria Gerboth came in after her at +1:01.
For the ski jumping part, this meant Geraghty-Moats started last and with a bonus of 13.7 points on second-placed Gocharova. Hirner had 14.2 points to make up, Haasch 14.5 and Gerboth 15.2.
In the men’s race, Taylor Fletcher followed a similar game plan than Geraghty-Moats and claimed a commanding race win as well with 0:46 seconds of advantage on runner-up Stephen Schumann, his 20-year-old teammate. In the jumping event, Fletcher leads with 11.5 points on Schumann, who broke away from the group in the third lap and was rewarded with a 15-second gap at the finish line.
The third place in the intermediate rankings went to German David Mach, who shared it with Norwegian Kasper Moen Flatla. Both finished +1:01 after Fletcher and contend with -15.2 points in the jumping event. Also the fifth placed was shared: Germany’s Julian Schmid and USA’s Jared Shumate finished as part of the bigger pursuing group at +1:02 after Fletcher and have to make up 15.5 points, while Terence Weber, Marc Luis Rainer, Viacheslav Barkov and Lars Ivar Skaarset all finished as seventh, +1:03 after the winner.
With a jump of 85 metres, Tara Geraghty-Moats managed to prevail also in the ski jumping round, jumping to a fourth place in the jumping ranking. With her point advantage from the race, she set top score of 103.6 point to take the win, even if the longest jump of the round was set by Germany’s Svenja Würth. 92.5 metres carried her to the eighth place overall. Stefaniya Nadymova had the best jump of the day with 89 metres and a point total of 110.6 points which helped her conquer the second place. Maria Gerboth showed a strong performance again with 83.5 metres and the third place, her second consecutive podium position.
Sigrun Kleinrath finished on rank four, Lisa Hirner was fifth and kept her chances of winning the Continental Cup overall 2020/21 alive if she reaches the podium tomorrow, same as her teammate Kleinrath. Cindy Haasch was sixth, Anastasia Gonchharova seventh and Svenja Würth, Svetlana Gladikova and Annalena Slamik claimed the rest of the Top Ten spots.
Terence Weber kept the jumping level high in the men’s field and proved that he is not one of the best World Cup ski jumpers for nothing. 93 metres and 119.9 point were the top score of the day and catapulted the German to his second win. Lars Ivar Skaarset claimed another second place but had no chance against Weber with a jump of only 87.5 metres and 95.7 points. David Mach completed the podium as the second German with 86.7 points. He earned 101.9 points with a jump of 84 metres and beat out Taylor Fletcher, who once more ended up on the fourth place with 84.6 points. The American already landed at 76 metres which cost him the podium.
Austria’s Manuel Einkemmer improved from position 12 after the race to rank five with a jump of 82.5 metres, teammate Thomas Rettenegger was sixth. The rest of the Top Ten positions were claimed by Julian Schmid, Marc Luis Rainer, COC overall leader Simen Tiller and Russia’s Viacheslav Barkov.
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