Lange leads German podium sweep in first COC event
Dec 12, 2020·Nordic Combined
Germany’s Jakob Lange continued his winning streak in Park City and lead teammates Simon Hüttel and Wendelin Thannheimer to a German podium sweep in Park City on Friday night.
After the morning’s ski jumping round had to be cancelled, the PCR was used, which put young American Niklas Malacinski into the lead with a 16-second head start on Austria’s Chistian Deuschl. Malacinski jumped 97 metres with excellent style marks. Deuschl landed at 101 metres and Simon Hüttel was third with 95.5 metes and a delay of 19 seconds at the start.
Thannheimer and Lange, known to be faster skiers, started their races from positions seven and 10 with respective start delays of +0:42 and +0:58 seconds.
The five-lap course at Soldier Hollow Nordic Centre saw Malacinski leading the race for one lap before large groups started forming. Lange closed the gap to the athletes ahead mid-way in the race and was able to recover with the group before going on the attack.
In the end, he won with a comfortable 13.5 second advantage on Hüttel, who in turn sprinted for the second position with Thannheimer and bested him by 0.5 seconds. Americans Jasper Good and Niklas Malacinski showed strong competitions as well with Good advancing from position six and Malacinski holding on to a position in the leading group. While they were unable to challenge the Germans for the podium in the end, they finished on strong fourth and fifth positions.
Christian Frank and Julian Schmid claimed positions six and seven and an Austrian group of Marc Luis Rainer, Thomas Rettenegger and Dominik Terzer closed out the Top Ten.
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