Riiber returns to dominance, Frenzel & Watabe return to podium
Nov 28, 2020·Nordic Combined
Today’s podium in Ruka was reserved for fathers: Jarl Magnus Riiber welcomed a daughter over the summer, Eric Frenzel is the proud dad of three kids and Akito Watabe just welcomed his first child right before the season.
In today’s event, Riiber returned to old strength and won by a big margin of 50.1 seconds. Eric Frenzel skied fast to take his first individual World Cup podium since Lillehammer in December 2018. Akito Watabe outsprinted Franz-Josef Rehrl on the way to rank three and finished +51.4 seconds after Riiber.
The Norwegian World Cup overall winner jumped to the lead with 141 metres (159.3 p.) and was visibly relieved to be back in the pole position for the race, even though Akito Watabe (139.5 m, 155.7 p.) was hot on his heels with a start delay of only 14 seconds.
Manuel Faißt was among the top jumpers again with 137 metres and 149.8 points and started his race 38 seconds after Riiber. Yoshito Watabe and Franz-Josef Rehrl were a duo at +0:48 and +0:49 seconds. The biggest development of the jumping round, however, was the return of Eric Frenzel and Johannes Rydzek to good jumping performances.
Frenzel, who is known as a very fast skier these days, ranked sixth with 139.5 metres and had 56 seconds to make up on Riiber. Johannes Rydzek started with a delay of one minute and 22 seconds and was still very much in striking distances for the top results.
As Riiber remarked after the race, the battle is switching more to the cross-country race these days as more of the other jumpers seem to have the potential to come closer to Riiber on the hill this season. However, the yellow bib bearer skied a flawless race today and steadily increased the distance to his pursuers. He turned the 14 seconds of head start on Akito Watabe into 24 seconds after 1.1. km and to 35.5. seconds after one lap. To Frenzel he maintained a clear gap of around 50 seconds all the time and skied at practically the same speed as the German.
While Riiber stayed true to his own rhythm, Watabe, Frenzel, fellow German Manuel Faißt and Austria’s Franz-Josef Rehrl found each other on the track at the halfway point and stayed together for a good while.
Eric Frenzel took the lead on the final uphill and managed to open up a small gap, while Rehrl, Watabe and Faißt sprinted for the remaining podium place. Surprisingly enough, it was Watabe who came out of top, even if the Japanese didn’t have the best track record with final sprints in the past. Franz-Josef Rehrl was fourth, Manuel Faißt fifth.
Youngster Johannes Lamparter impressed again, today with strong skiing together with Germany’s Johannes Rydzek. In the end, they missed 10 seconds to close the gap to the foursome ahead of them and finished sixth and seventh. Lukas Greiderer, Yoshito Watabe and Jens Lurås Oftebro completed the Top Ten.
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