Combined dominator Jarl Magnus Riiber celebrates his third win of the season. He also benefits from the canceled competition in Ramsau, which the German team is struggling with.
Jarl Magnus Riiber against the Germans – this is how the season so far in the men’s Nordic combined can be summarized. The previous race winners were either called Riiber or Johannes Rydzek or Vinzenz Geiger.
And this series now continues in Ramsau in Austria – with the better ending for Riiber. Because after the cross-country skiing in the mass start on Friday afternoon, in which Vinzenz Geiger was fifth in the race for the day’s victory, the jumping on the Dachstein was canceled for the men, as before for the women, because of too much fresh snow and strong winds – and the PCR (Provisional Competition Round) counted as a result. Riiber, one of the strongest jumpers in the field, once again delivered a parade performance.
Riiber pushes past the rest – Geiger falls back
He moved up from sixth place to his third win of the season and thus extended his overall World Cup lead. Overall, it was Riiber’s 76th World Cup success. Behind him was the cross-country skiing winner Jens Luraas Oftebro. Kristian Ilves from Estonia took third place.
Geiger actually started the jump in fifth place, 8.6 seconds behind the lead. But his jump from Thursday – 38th place with just 112 points – was too weak to be able to intervene in the podium fight.
In ninth place he finished the competition as the second best German, Julian Schmid came sixth. “It is of course very, very unfortunate”said national coach Eric Frenzel in the Sportschau interview. “It’s just annoying that the weather is acting up like this.”
Frenzel sees his team “underperformed”
Frenzel also looked at the rest of his team, who hadn’t really coped with the PCR on Thursday. “I’m happy with my boys”said Frenzel.
“In the end, the Norwegians have already shown that they are a very good, strong-running nation. Of course, the conditions would have been good to do better than yesterday at the PCR.” He saw his athletes “beaten below value”.
Behind Schmid and Geiger, Manuel Faißt came tenth, Johannes Rydzek took 13th place. Terence Weber improved to 16th place. Wendelin Thannheimer and David Mach were 18th and 19th.