The Norwegian team has taken the victory in a riveting finish against the German team that pitted Jørgen Graabak and Fabian Rießle against each other. Both wanted to take the middle lane and Rießle crashed on the last metres, resulting in Norway crossing the finish line 7.9 seconds earlier than Germany. Team Austria with Philipp Orter on the last leg finished 22.2 seconds later.
The very attractive jumping competition offered lots of thrills and long jumps to the spectators at the Langenwaldschanze. Perpetual rivals Akito Watabe and Eric Frenzel both set new hill records: the Japanese with 106.5 metres (125.2 p.) and Frenzel with even longer 107 metres in slightly better conditions (122 p.).
In total, Team Germany was in the lead with Manuel Faißt, Johannes Rydzek, Fabian Rießle and Eric Frenzel accumulating a point total of 473.9 points which meant a head start of 24 seconds on Team Norway.
Krog, Moan, Graabak and Schmid also showed a strong jumping performance with 100, 94.5, 97 and 104.5 metres which added up to 455.9 points. The Japanese team raked in the intermediate third rank with 96, 106.5, 97 and 102.5 metres and followed just one second behind the Norwegian team.
Team Austria had to make up a delay of 46 seconds on the leaders after Gruber, Flaschberger, Orter and Klapfer had totalled 439.6 points, a manageable distance to the podium ranks for the team. A very young Czech team consisting of Ondrej Pazout, Lukas Danek, Miroslav Dvorak and Junior World Champion Tomas Portyk showed a very solid performance on the jumping hill and ranked fifth, +0:54 behind the leaders from Germany. Finland, Italy, France and USA had to contend with times behind starting from one minute and 23 seconds up to two minutes and two seconds.
The race in Schonach’s Wittenbachtal started in light snowfall that turned heavy during the second group of skiers. As expected, Magnus Moan made up the 25 seconds on Manuel Faißt on the first leg and from this moment on until the last metres to the finish, the two teams stayed together. Jan Schmid and Eric Frenzel, as well as Magnus Krog and Johannes Rydzek were skiing quite slow, tactical races and none of the skiers could draw away from the respective other except for a few metres towards the end of the laps.
On the fourth leg, the dramatic fight for the victory reached its climax right before the finish strait started. Both athletes fought to take the middle lane and Fabian Rießle lost balance and fell which effectively destroyed the German hopes for the victory.
Behind the top two teams, Austria recovered from a good but not great performance on the jumping hill and overtook the Japanese team and captured the third rank with quite a big distance to the fourth place. Japan finished one minute and 39 seconds after Norway and which put them about one minute and 10 seconds behind Austria. France battled their way from rank eight to rank five, Italy finished sixth, Finland seventh, the young Czech team fell back to rank eight and USA stayed on rank nine.
Final Results
Ski Jumping results
