Jan Schmid keeps on winning

World Cup leader Jan Schmid extended his lead with another victory, his fourth in total and the second back-to-back since his win in Val di Fiemme last week. Schmid skied a strong race, mostly together with jumping leader Akito Watabe but beat the Japanese by 1.4 seconds in the end. Ilkka Herola came through with a podium result for the Finnish team, ending his race on the third place after beating Austria’s Lukas Klapfer in a finish line sprint by 0.3 seconds.

Akito Watabe showed again why he really likes the hill in Chaux-Neuve and captured a jumping victory with 118 metres and 123.8 points, which put him 22 seconds in the lead at the start line of the cross-country race. Runner-up after the jumping event was Jarl Riiber, who jumped 113 metres from one gate lower than the rest of the field. Veteran Willi Denifl proved he is still competitive on the jumping hill with the third intermediate position (114 m; 117.2 p.) and started 26 seconds after the Japanese.

With slightly changing wind conditions, some of the favourites came through, like overall leader Jan Schmid, who made his disastrous PCR jump forgotten with 114.5 metres and the intermediate fourth position. Lukas Klapfer, who shone with two podiums last weekend made his ambitions known again today and started with a delay of 42 seconds. Ilkka Herola was very happy about his jumping performance returning and giving him a start position 50 seconds behind Watabe. A German group of top favourites had formed a little later in the starting order, with Johannes Rydzek, Fabian Rießle and Eric Frenzel starting together with bibs 19, 20 and 21 and time disadvantages of +1:16, +1:17 and +1:18.

The cross-country race took place in nearly whiteout conditions: heavy snow and fog made the visibility into an issue on the track and for leader Akito Watabe it was almost not easy finding his way around the course. After one lap, he got company in the form of Jan Schmid, who hung on to the Japanese and also struggled with the hard course and difficult conditions. In the end, he managed to get ahead of Watabe on the final stretch and as both athletes are not the strongest sprinters, he did not have to face much fight from the Japanese.

Watabe was still satisfied with his tactic to keep pulling instead of waiting for the bigger group to catch up as this secured a podium result for him, even if it wasn’t the victory in the end.

Behind the two leaders, a bigger group battled for the remaining podium position. In the end, Ilkka Herola finally ended the finish line sprint losing streak for the Finnish team and beat Klapfer, securing his second career podium. Jørgen Graabak and Fabian Rießle finished fifth and sixth, +55.6 and +56.3 seconds after the winner. The rest of the Top Ten positions went to Franz-Josef Rehrl, Johannes Rydzek, Francois Braud and Eric Frenzel.