World Champion and overall World Cup winner Eric
Frenzel has stared where he left off last season
and won the first race of the winter 2013/14. He
finished 3,5 seconds ahead of Joergen Graabak, the
third rank went to Graabak's teammate Magnus Krog
(+6,9).
Originally, a team competition had been planned
for today but after no ski jumping was possible
in the morning due to unsafe wind conditions, yesterday's
Provisional Competition Round had to be used and
the schedule was switched to an individual competition.
Yesterday, Russia's young jumping sensation Evgeniy
Klimov wowed the crowd with a jump of 139,5 metres
which meant 141,3 points and a 27-second advantage
on Haavard Klemetsen on the cross-country track.
Klemetsen set a jump of 132 metres (134,5 p.). The
third athlete out on the cross-country track was
Austria's Wilhelm Denifl who jumped 129,5 metres
(129,4 p.) which meant a time disadvantage of 48
seconds on Klimov.
Frenzel set himself up in an excellent chasing position
with a time behind of +01:12, a managable disadvantage
for the German superstar. His biggest opponent from
last year, Jason Lamy Chappuis had a slightly weaker
jump and went out on the track one minute and 33
seconds after Klimov.
With Karl-August Tirmaa, Sinde Ure Soetvik and Tobias
Haug, three rather surprising athletes made it into
the intermediate Top Ten. In the race, they were
not able to hold on to their positions, finishing
36th, 40th and 32nd.
During the cross-country race, a strong Eric Frenzel
managed to catch up with the three athletes in front
of him by the half-time of the race, at 5 km. From
then on, he skied very confidently towards his next
individual victory.
Behind him a very fast group of followers formed
around Jason Lamy Chappuis and Magnus Krog and tried
to close the gap towards Frenzel which almost succeeded
when fellow Norwegians Mikko Kokslien and Joergen
Graabak powered to the front, closing the gap to
Frenzel to below ten seconds. Both started with
time disadvantages of over two minutes. In the end,
Kokslien was just too tired to defend a podium place
against his teammates and finished fourth, followed
by Jason Lamy Chappuis in fifth and Haavard Klemetsen
in sixth.
