"King" Eric Frenzel has the last laugh at the TRIPLE

Seefeld and Eric Frenzel - the love story continues. After having been beaten narrowly by teammate Johannes Rydzek two days in a row, Frenzel retook his rightful place as the „King of Seefeld“ today. He beat Rydzek by 30.5 seconds at the finish of the last 15 km cross-country race. World Champion Bernhard Gruber took the remaining spot on the podium, finishing one minute and 18 seconds behind Frenzel.

After two rounds of jumping of the best 30 athletes of the TRIPLE, Johannes Rydzek maintained his lead. The German showed 106 and 105.5 metres and proved he has returned to a steady good jumping shape after struggling in the beginning of January. Rydzek held a total 285.4 points after his two jumps, which translated into a 18-second head start on Austrian Bernhard Gruber.

Gruber delighted the audience with two jumps of 107.5 metres, which put the reigning World Champion into the second position. Fellow Austrian Mario Seidl also gained two positions after jumping 107.5 and 109 metres, the longest jump of the day. Title defender Eric Frenzel was still in the running as he showed 106 and 106.5 metres. With 20 seconds to make up on the 15 kilometres, he started with the same time as Mario Seidl (280.5 and 280.4 points, respectively).

Yesterday’s podium sensation Samuel Costa from Italy was having slightly weaker jumps today: 106 and 104.5 metres were good but gave him the difficult task to make up 43 seconds on leader Johannes Rydzek. Behind Costa, a bigger gap opened up to pursuer Fabian Rießle. The German had to take on a time disadvantage of one minute and 34 seconds, hard to do but not impossible for the very strong skier on a distance of 15 km. For Akito Watabe and Terence Weber, who ranked seventh and eighth, start delays of around two minutes made the task to fight for the podium very difficult.

The long „unusual“ 15 kilometres started out with Johannes Rydzek working alone to keep his advantage approximately until the halfway point of the race. Eric Frenzel, Mario Seidl and Bernhard Gruber started out together with Eric Frenzel stepping on the gas to close the gap to his teammate who was skiing ahead. At some point, the speed got too high for the two Austrians and from then on, it was a fight Germany - Germany for the first two spots on the podium and Austria - Austria for third place.

On the fifth lap Frenzel started an attack and to the surprise of many, Rydzek was unable to follow anymore. The gap between the two got bigger and bigger and while Frenzel skied towards a triumphal finish, Rydzek reached the end of the race with a big distance and was visibly crestfallen. Mario Seidl and Bernhard Gruber fought man to man for the third rank until the finish line - with the veteran edging out today's up-and-coming young athlete today. Samuel Costa successfully defended his fifth position against Fabian Rießle.

Magnus Krog improved to a seventh position, Ilkka Herola finished eighth, Akito Watabe ninth and Björn Kircheisen entered the Top Ten on rank ten. With today's result, Eric Frenzel also retakes his yellow bib as the World Cup leader.