Germans retain Nordic Combined world team title
BySportsbeat
Updated 26/02/2017 at 17:30 GMT
German team Bjorn Kircheisen, Eric Frenzel, Fabian Riessle and Johannes Rydzek turned in a dominant performance to defend their FIS Nordic Combined World Cup team title.
Johannes Rydzek, Fabian Rießle und Björn Kircheisen
Image credit: Imago
The Germans had won the title back in Falun 2015 and there was no sign of nerves as they completely took the field to task with a dominant performance.
Rydzek finished the anchor leg 41.7 second ahead of second-place Team Norway, with Austria clinching the bronze medal despite strong final-lap challenges from Japan and Finland.
In the jumps, Kircheisen, Frenzel, Riessle and Rydzek combined effort earned the German quad a headstart of 44 seconds with jumps of 91, 97, 100 and 96.5 metres and a total of 500.8.
Hideaki Nagai and Takehiro Watanabe finished with 468 points in the jumps and started alongside the French in pursuit of Germany, while Austria and Norway had to try and bridge 1:05 and 1:07 respectively.
While the German victory was never in doubt – the gap to second place never got below 45 seconds – but Norway quickly closed down Japan, France and Austria to build up a comfortable 20-second buffer in second.
Austrian Paul Gerstgraser held off Finnish veteran Hannu Manninen and Japan’s Akito Watabe for bronze on the final 5km circuit.
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