Aguri Shimizu won the second gold medal for Japan in the Winter Universiade Trentino 2013. The 21-year-old is a marketing student at Senshu University in Kanagawa. He triumphed in the Nordic Combined mass-start competition, with a score of 268.5, edging two Polish athletes, Adam Cieslar (267,1) and Pawel Slowiok (262,2), who ranked sixth and second, after the 10km Cross-Country race.
After winning bronze last Friday in the Gundersen race and gold at the Universiade of Erzurum 2011, in the mass-start Shimizu was able to top high-level athletes, like Szczepan Kupczak (POL) and Tobias Simon (GER), who both missed the podium. The German had the two best jumps, but it wasn’t enough to endanger Shimizu’s supremacy. Simon finished only 24th.
Shimizu, ranked fifth after the 10km Cross-Country race, competed during the afternoon at Lago di Tesero. He maintained the same position after the first set of jumps. Then, an excellent second jump – 101 meters – earned him the victory. “I am very happy about this medal”, he said, “And that I’ve honored Japan once more. Now let's see what happens on Wednesday, during the team-competition, and who knows? Maybe another success will come!”
