Maiden win for Lars Buraas at Continental Cup in Lahti

Also on the second day of the Continental Cup weekend in Lahti Christian Deuschl showed that he’s unbeatable at the ski jumping hill at the moment. Another jump to 97.0m (134.9p.) took him to the lead, 35 seconds ahead of Kasper Moen Flatla (96.5m, 126.1p.) and 40 seconds ahead of Sakutaro Kobayashi (94.5m, 124.9p.). The two U.S. boys Jasper Good (94.0m, 123.6p.) and Niklas Malacinski (92.0m, 122.4p.) as well as local hero Otto Niittykoski (94.0m, 121.4p.) followed on rank four, five and six. Saturday’s winner Andreas Skoglund and Frenchman Matteo Baud, who was fourth, both didn’t compete to save some energy for the upcoming Junior World Championship events in a few days.

FIS Continental Cup’s fastest cross-country skier Lars Buraas jumped 87.5m (110.2p.) and had to start the race from rank 30, 1:39 minutes behind Deuschl. The Norwegian gave it all right from the beginning and it took him only two and half laps to catch up with his teammate Flatla, who had taken over the lead from Deuschl. Buraas and Flatla went together onto the last lap, where Buraas was able to show his excellent cross-country shape once again and put a few meters between himself and Flatla, who was not able to close the gap anymore. 26-year-old Buraas celebrated his career’s first Continental Cup win 10.1 seconds ahead of Flatla. Jared Shumate, who had started the race one second ahead of Buraas from rank 29 and Jasper Good were fighting for the third spot on the podium. In the end it was Shumate (+18.7 seconds), who was slightly ahead of his teammate (+20.7 seconds). The two Norwegians and the two U.S. boys were followed by two Finns: Wille Karhumaa (+35.7 seconds) and Otto Niitykoski (+43.2 seconds) followed on rank five and six.
Christian Deuschl (+43.8 seconds), Niklas Malacinski (+44.1 seconds), Sakutaro Kobayashi (+44.8 seconds) and Dmytro Mazurchuk (+48.7 seconds) completed the top 10, what made it a total number of 6 nations within the ten top spots.