Vinzenz Geiger took it a little more calmly on the last meters to the crystal ball, Julian Schmid stormed again on the podium: at the season finale of the Nordic combiners in Lahti, the newly baked World Cup winner Geiger was content with 15th place and then accepted the coveted trophy with bright eyes.
Team world champion Schmid only had to give up the Austrian Johannes Lamparter and finished second.
On the last day of a great season, in which Geiger won seven races and also belonging to the German Gold Quartet at the World Cup in Trondheim, Geiger had not got beyond 28th place. Unlike the day before, when he stormed from 29 to four, this time there was a big catch -up – the 27 -year -old Oberstdorfer enjoyed the final act in the trail.
There, ex-world champion Lamparter won like the day before, at the finish he was 21.2 seconds ahead of Schmid, who was on the podium for the eighth time this winter. The Frenchman Laurent Muhlethaler came third. Lamparter grabbed Schmid third in the World Cup overall ranking behind Geiger and Norway’s record world champion Jarl Magnus Riiber.
Three other Germans in the top ten
Riiber surprisingly ended his career last Sunday at the home World Cup in Oslo, making Geiger’s Triumph perfectly perfect. The dominator, who announced his farewell at the end of the season for health and family reasons in January, led the World Cup to Oslo. Then, however, he refrained from gaining the overall ranking for the sixth time. “I’m just very tired,” said the 27-year-old.
After Eric Frenzel (5), Ronny Ackermann (3) and Hermann wine book, Geiger is the fourth German man who won the overall World Cup. An outstanding World Cup season ended for the German combination team. A week before Geiger, Nathalie Armbruster had already won the crystal ball among women.
Three more Germans ran behind Schmid on Saturday in the top 10. Terence Weber became sixth, Johannes Rydzek, who had become four times world champion in Lahti 2017, came to seventh. Wendelin Thannheimer came ninth.