Fabian Rießle proved to be the strongest Nordic Combined athlete in the third competition in Lahti, the second Individual Gundersen on schedule. The German beat his teammate Eric Frenzel by 5.1 seconds. Japanese Akito Watabe held on to the third rank and finished 11 seconds later than Rießle.  

As the wind conditions especially at the takeoff were very gusty and unstable, Friday’s PCR had to be used. Norway’s Jarl Riiber had been the winner of the PCR but as the Norwegian dislocated his shoulder in the race yesterday, he did not start in today’s race. This put Japan’s Akito Watabe at the head of the field after 127.5 metres with a point total of 131.7 points and a time advantage of 30 seconds on Germany’s Eric Frenzel who had 124 metres to show for. Teammate Fabian Rießle had an excellent jump of 124.5 metres which put him 38 seconds behind the leader Watabe and in an excellent position to fight for today’s victory.

Norwegians Håvard Klemetsen and Jan Schmid followed at 50 and 51 seconds behind Watabe and then a slighly bigger gap opened up to Poland’s Szczepan Kupczak, Mario Seidl, Miroslav Dvorak and Samuel Costa who completed the jumping Top Ten and started between one minute 16 and one minute and 36 seconds behind Watabe.

Both Watabe and Eric Frenzel knew it would be hard to beat Fabian Rießle with a jumping performance like this and so the Japanese started into the race with a lower pace. Frenzel and Rießle found each other on the track quite soon and skied together until they caught up with Watabe around the 5 km mark. From this moment on it was a leading trio in which nobody really wanted to do the leading work. So at some points the Watabe, Frenzel and Rießle almost stood on the track which was possible because the pursuers were more than 45 seconds behind at this point. 

Going out on the last lap, Rießle ignited the turbo and drew away from Frenzel and Watabe in an almost effortless manner. Frenzel followed about 5 second behind and it was clear that he would not have to face stiff competition from a tired Akito Watabe coasted into the finish 11 seconds after Rießle. 

Fellow German Johannes Rydzek skied a very fast race and improved his 19th position into a final fourth place and Jan Schmid and Ilkka Herola fought for the fifth position in a photo finish which Schmid won. Francois Braud claimed rank seven, Miroslav Dvorak returned to the Top Ten with position eight and Lukas Klapfer and Magnus Krog competed the Top Ten.

Source: fis-ski.com