Nordic combination: Rydzek wins ahead of Frenzel in Kuusamo

The German combination aces Johannes Rydzek and Eric Frenzel celebrated a German one-two victory at the third World Cup race in Kuusamo and thus managed the liberation stroke after the disappointing start of the season.

In a thrilling race, World Champion Rydzek won the sprint with a lead of 0.6 seconds over overall World Cup winner Frenzel and clinched his 15th place. Career success.

“Finland specialist” Rydzek, who won four World Championship gold medals in Lahti in February and won both individual races in Kuusamo in the previous year, was still in eighth place after the jumping competition and Frenzel managed to make it onto the podium from 15th place. Fin Eero Hirvonen from Finland finished third.

Rydzek, who thus became the first combiner to meet the Olympic norm, had secured the third place on Saturday for the first German podium finish, after only a disappointing 19th place at the start on Friday. had been.

Frenzel had already finished the competition on Friday after jumping with a huge gap, on Saturday he was twelfth – followed by the hoped-for run on the podium “This was a very strenuous race. I hope that there is still some room to breathe,”said Frenzel.

The Olympic champion had gone into the cross-country track with a gap of 1:27 minutes and benefited from the slow pace of the leading group and a fall of previous day’s winner Akito Watabe, who finished eleventh. Björn Kircheisen finished twelfth on Sunday, followed by Manuel Faißt on the 17th place. Rank.

Team World Champion Fabian Rießle experienced a disaster. The five-time World Cup winner only finished 44th in Sunday morning’s qualifying round among the non-prequalified athletes and thus missed out on the actual competition.

“He made a technical mistake with the jump, which happens every now and then,” said jumping trainer Ronny Ackermann on ARD:”We’ll have to make sure that we turn it off in the next few weeks.