Riiber claims final win of the season and third crystal globe
Mar 21, 2021·Nordic Combined
Jarl Magnus Riiber topped an “almost perfect” season 2020/21 off with a final victory. He won ahead of his teammate Espen Bjørnstad by 3.7 seconds. Fabian Rießle conquered the remaining podium position by finishing +17.2 seconds after Riiber.
In total, Riiber won nine individual events this winter, the Ruka Tour, the Nordic Combined TRIPLE in Seefeld, two gold medals at the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships in Oberstdorf and his third consecutive crystal globe this winter.
Today’s wind conditions were a lot calmer than on the previous days and so the audience saw many high-quality jumps and a stacked result that put some of the local heroes in promising positions.
Ryota Yamamoto won the last jumping round of the winter with 143 metres and 125.6 points and claimed seven-second head start on overall World Cup winner Jarl Magnus Riiber. Riiber jumped to 139.5 metres and had 123.9 points. Teammate Espen Bjørnstad could finally cheer about a good jump of 139 metres and the intermediate third position with a start delay of only 9 seconds.
Behind this leading trio, a bigger gap opened and Manuel Faißt followed next with 136 metres and 117.8 points. He started 31 seconds after the leader and together with teammate Fabian Rießle, who showed 135 metres to claim rank five. With a delay of 35 seconds, the 30-year-old was one of the podium contenders for the day. Mario Seidl and Johannes Lamparter were an Austrian duo on positions six and seven and started +0:43 and +0:49 behind the leaders.
In the fight for the overall podium, Vinzenz Geiger had the better hand after the jumping round with position 11 and +1:17 to catch up on the leaders. Akito Watabe was very unlucky with the conditions and ended up only on position 14 with a delay of +1:26.
Espen Bjørnstad and Jarl Magnus Riiber had laid a plan to try and stick together in the hopes of giving Bjørnstad a leg up to the podium and the Norwegian plan worked to perfection. The two athletes skied together with leader Ryota Yamamoto until the Japanese had to let got after the 5 km point in the race. Behind the two leaders, Johannes Lamparter skied up to Fabian Rießle and followed the German in hopes of closing the gap to the two leaders but Riiber and Bjørnstad held firm.
Riiber attacked before the S-turns and onto the finish straight and put the important metres between him and his teammate to take a clear win. A very pleased Espen Bjørnstad collected the fifth individual podium result of his career.
In the fight for rank three, Ryota Yamamoto was caught by Lamparter and Rießle at the 7.4 km intermediate time and also here the Japanese tried his utmost to hang on. He lost touch of the two athletes on the last lap but defended a final fifth position impressively against Sprint King Vinzenz Geiger in a finish line sprint.
Jens Lurås Oftebro was seventh, Ilkka Herola won the Best Skier Trophy by setting the fastest time of the day once more and finished eighth. Akito Watabe impressively skied the third-fastest time of the day and was ninth, Manuel Faißt closed out the Top Ten.
Final Results
Ski Jumping Results
With today's result, Riiber won the overall World Cup standings with 1140 points. Vinzenz Geiger takes second with 810 and Akito Watabe returned to the overall podium for the ninth time in his career with 757. Germany wins the Nations Cup with 3597 points, Norway ranks second 3127 and Austria third with 2166 points.
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