Franz-Josef Rehrl takes Mass Start victory in Klingenthal
Aug 28, 2019·Nordic Combined
Franz-Josef Rehrl (AUT) has taken his first-ever Mass Start victory in Klingenthal. The Austrian flew to 140 metres in the final jumping event and claimed the win with a point total of 145 and by 3.7 points over runner-up Akito Watabe (JPN). The third place went to Ryota Yamamoto (JPN) and Szczepan Kupczak (POL), who both reached 134.9 points.
In the Mass Start race, Fabian Rießle mastered the heat and the narrow, flat course best and claimed the intermediate victory, even though the gaps between the athletes did not grow big.
Rießle crossed the finish line in 21:30.6, beating Austrian Philipp Orter by 3.8 seconds in the end. Raffaele Buzzi (ITA) and Vinzenz Geiger (GER) stayed within 10 seconds of Rießle’s time and finished +6.1 and +7.5 seconds after Rießle.
For the jumping event, this meant one minus point at the start for Orter, -1,5 for Buzzi and -1.9 for Geiger. Eric Frenzel also had a good race and finished on the fifth position. He started his jump with -2.6 points, the same as Japanese veteran Hideaki Nagai, who claimed position six.
The strong jumpers Johannes Lamparter (AUT), Akito Watabe (JPN), Franz-Josef Rehrl (AUT), Ryota Yamamoto (JPN), and Szcepan Kupczak (POL) ranked seventh, eighth, eleventh, thirteenth and 21st, with -2.8, -2.9, -3.3 and -5.2 points respectively.
The final jumping round toppled the race result and put the good jumpers to the fore. Franz-Josef Rehrl was the only one to set a jump on 140 metres and prevailed to take his first-ever win in the summer. He now leads the overall standings jointly with Akito Watabe, both athletes holding 180 points with Watabe’s second place today.
In a first for both athletes, the third place went to Poland and Japan, with ski jumping experts Szczepan Kupczak and Ryota Yamamoto sharing the third place with jumps of 138 and 137.5 m respectively. Christian Deuschl claimed a very good fifth place, Eric Frenzel finished on rank six and also Vitalii Ivanov (RUS) could be very satisfied with a final seventh place. The rest of the Top Ten results went to Harald Riiber, Hideaki Nagai and Samuel Costa.
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