Saturday at Lahti Ski Games started with XC skiing classic style sprints.
In the women’s competition the race was suspenseful until the very last moment. Norwegian Kristine Stavås Skistad and Swedish Jonna Sundling were head to head when coming to the finish line. However, Skistad was a bit better, taking home the gold medal with only 0.13 second difference. Third was Norwegian Tiril Udnes Weng with a six and a half second difference to the winner.
This being the last sprint competition of the season, the Crystal Globe was handed to today’s fourth, Maja Dahlqvist. In the men’s competition, the final was a competition between five Norwegians and Swedish Calle Halfvarsson. The winner was no surprise, as Johannes Klaebo took home both the gold medal of the race and the Crystal Globe. Halfvarsson put up a good fight against the Norwegians, taking the second place with 0.75 second difference to the winner. Third was Erik Valnes, coming to the goal 0.93 seconds after his fellow Norwegian.
Riiber unbeatable in Lahti too
The top three ski jumpers in the penultimate WC Nordic Combined Competition were Kristjan Ilves (Estonia), Ryota Yamamoto (Japan) and Jarl Magnus Riiber (Norway). This led to an exciting situation as the World Cup leaders were more than 1 min 30 sec behind before the 10 km ski race: Johannes Lamparter +1,58 min, Julian Schmid +1,56 min and Jens Luraas Oftebro +1,30 min.In the skiing part of the competition, Ilves and Riiber competed against each other for the win in the suspenseful race. Riiber was stronger in the skiing in the end, taking home the gold medal with a 1.7 second difference. The race for the bronze medal was also thrilling, as Finland’s Ilkka Herola and Norway’s Jens Lurås Oftebro raced against each other until the very last meters. Norwegian ended up being a bit faster, beating Herola by a 0.4 second.
Team Austria won the large hill competition
Team Austria was superior to other teams in the men’s ski jumping team event. With a team of Daniel Tschofenig, Michael Hayböck, Jan Hörl and Stefan Kraft they led the competition already after the first round by 24 points and managed to eventually secure the victory by a whopping 26 points before Slovenia and Poland.
Picture: Janina Pitkänen