Austria’s Nordic Combineers started the Olympic season on Friday in Ruka with a strong team performance. Mario Seidl, as the leader, barely missed the podium after the jump and dropped back to fourth place. The 24-year-old Norwegian Espen Andersen enjoyed his first World Cup victory in front of fellow countryman Jan Schmid (+ 7.7 sec.) after the 5km cross-country ski run and 12:58.0 minutes.
Seidl ended up missing 4.4 seconds on the podium, which was completed by Akito Watabe from Japan in third place. With Willi Denifl (5th) and Martin Fritz (7th), who achieved his best World Cup result so far, three ÖSV athletes made it into the top 7. The new “Ruka”-tour continues on Saturday and Sunday with two further individual competitions (each more than 10 km in the cross-country ski run), however, the results are evaluated individually in contrast to the Seefeld-Triple. In the overall ranking, a prize money bonus of 70,500 Swiss francs will then be distributed to the top 20 and the winner will receive 15,000 francs.
Seidl could have done more on the opening day of the new World Cup season. After a 131 m set, he went into the cross-country skiing as leader, four seconds ahead of the later winner. The Salzburg rider held up well to the last kilometre on second place, but he still lacks a bit of substance in cross-country skiing:”I have to say, the race was very tough today. It was such a watcher. The starting position was actually brilliant, I was able to show a really cool jump on the hill,”said the sixth overall last season.
On the cross-country ski run, he was unable to gain any ground in the battle for podium places, both in Andersen’s attack and in the final climb “Unfortunately, I was not strong enough today. I hope to start tomorrow with a better rhythm, but I’m in good spirits,”says Seidl.
This time Björn Kircheisen was the eighth best DSV-man for the Germans, who dominated last season, who had found some very bad conditions in jumping in Kuusamo. Defending champion Eric Frenzel, who was the last to have to leave the beam in the sudden onset of heavy snow storms, as well as the Austrian David Pommer, because of a large backlog, refrained from competing in cross-country skiing.
Oldie “Willi Denifl, who sees Ruka as his favourite jump, was also satisfied:” It wasn’t as he had hoped for when jumping. But if I even with a little bit of wisdom, experience and cheekiness still sweep away and am still at the forefront, it makes me feel very positive. A fifth place is, I think, the best I’ve ever done at the beginning of the season:” For the 10km competition Denifl hopes that he gets his legs even more into the “race mode”.