Watabe makes it four in a row with home victory
BySportsbeat
Updated 03/02/2018 at 14:08 GMT
Akito Watabe won a fourth successive round of the Nordic Combined World Cup as he took victory on home snow in Hakuba.
Akito Watabe of Japan celebrates after the Nordic Combined Men's Gundersen LH HS142/10.0 Km competition at the FIS World Cup Ruka Nordic 2017 in Ruka, Kuusamo in Finland on November 25, 2017
Image credit: Getty Images
The 29-year-old Olympic silver medallist scored the best jump of the competition, registering 136.4 points to go into the 10km cross country with a 16 second lead over Estonia’s Kristjan Ilves.
And despite Watabe registering just the third fastest time over 10km, he still did enough to win by 1:12.6 from Norway’s Jan Schmid, with Ilves slipping back into fourth.
Germany’s Manuel Faisst came in ten seconds behind Schmid to take third place, to match his position after the jumping.
The win for Watabe sends him into the final race before the Olympics in buoyant mood and with a 60-point advantage over Schmid in the overall World Cup standings.
Sunday sees the last race World Cup round before the athletes head to PyeongChang, with Watabe looking to go one better than he did four years ago.
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