After winning this year's Summer Grand Prix together
with Austria's Berni Gruber, it seems Akito Watabe
isn't done with standing on top of the podium yet.
At the Nordic Summer festival back hime in Habuka,
Watabe took another win, ahead of teammates Taihei
Kato and Takehiro Watanabe. Yoshito Watabe came
in fourth.
Yoshito Watabe seems to have recovered perfectly
from his Summer Grand Prix crash in Oberwiesenthal
as he was in the lead after the jumping part of
the competition with a jump of 89,5 metres which
give him 100,5 points and a 10 second-lead on his
brother Akito who delivered 88 metres (108 p.).
Unofrtunately, Yoshito was only able to roller-ski
the 23rd best time out of the 67 total starters
which cost him a place on the podium.
At the intermediate point, Takehiro Watanabe was
already lurking in third place with a time behind
of only 18 seconds. In the race, the 4th and 9th
fastest cross-country times were enough for Akito
Watabe and his young teammate Watanabe to overtake
Yoshito Watabe and claim the first two spots on
the podium. Akito finally finished a clear 33 seconds
ahead of Watanabe. Taihei Kato set the second fastest
cross-country time with 19:03.6 for the 10 kilometres
and improved his intermediate eleventh rank to a
final podium position. He finished 1:05 after Watabe
but about 5 seconds before Yoshito Watabe.