After having two athletes on the podium yesterday,
Haavard Klemetsen, Magnus Krog, Mikko Kokslien and
Joergen Graabak won today's Nordic Combined team
event at the Nordic Opening in Ruka. The Norwegian
squad crossed the finish line a clear 30,7 seconds
earlier than the team from Germany (Bjo"rn
Kircheisen, Manuel Faisst, Johannes Rydzek and Eric
Frenzel). The podium was completed by Team Japan,
consisting of Taihei Kato, Yoshito Watabe, Hideaki
Nagai and Akito Watabe.
In the ski jumping part, the Norwegian team impressively
underlined their good shape from yesterday's individual
event and won with a total of 523,4 points ahead
of Team Japan (502,4) and Russia (491,6). Especially
Magnus Krog helped secure the time advantage of
28 seconds with a new personal best of 145 metres.
Graabak, Kokslien and Klemetsen complemented Krog's
super jump with solid distances of 130, 127,5 and
130 metres.
In team Japan, jumping specialist Yoshito Watabe
found back to old strength and set an equally impressive
distance of 144,5 metres shortly after Krog. The
Russian team still seems to be riding the wave of
success from yesterday's competition and showed
jumps on a constantly high level. Ivan Panin, Ernest
Yahin, Niyaz Nabeev and Evgeniy Klimov jumped 126,
125, 121 and 131,5 metres which gave them an excellent
position for the cross-country race, only 42 seconds
behind Norway.
Last year's dominating team from Germany ranked
fourth at the intermediate point with a managable
time disadvantage of 48 seconds, Austria followed
in fifth position with +1:06 and France on sixth
with +1:28.
In the race, Klemetsen, Kato and Klimov went out
on the track first, being chased by strong German
cross-country skier Bjo"rn Kircheisen who managed
to come dangerously close to the Norwegian leaders,
setting the fastest time of the day with 12:15.9
for the 5 km. In the second group Manuel Faisst
and Magnus Krog had an intense fight going on over
almost all of the 5 kilometres until Krog could
create a gap at the end and gain about 10 seconds.
Johannes Rydzek did not stand a chance agains strong
skier Mikko Kokslien and lost another 10 seconds
on team Norway. On the last two laps, Joergen Graabak
could ski the victory home comfortably and even
had time to take a flag and check his watch for
his cross-country time before crossing the finish
line 30,7 seconds ahead of Frenzel.
The fights for the remaining podium ranks was on
between Japan and France and on World Champion Jason
Lamy Chappuis' lap, it looked like the French team
was headed for the podium once more, but Hideaki
Nagai and Akito Watabe conquered the lead back from
Braud and Laheurte and claimed the Japanese podium
rank.
