By Mitch Phillips
ZHANGJIAKOU, China (Reuters) – Austria edged to a marginal eight-second lead over Norway in the ski jumping ahead of the cross-country section in a snowy Nordic combined men’s large hill team relay on Thursday.
With defending champions Germany 11 seconds off the lead and Japan one second further back, there is little between the “big four” nations of the sport, who have each won the Olympic relay twice since it joined the Games in 1988.
Austria, led by Franz-Josef Rehrl’s 127.5 pointer and world champion Johannes Lamparter’s 125.5.2 jump, notched 475.4 points.
Norway’s normal hill world champion Jarl Magnus Riiber, who struggled for fitness in the individual large hill cross country leg on Tuesday having only just emerged from two weeks of COVID isolation, ruled himself out of contention for Thursday’s event, the last of the Nordic combined programme at the Games.
The Norwegians were hardly short of quality, however, with Joergen Graabak, gold and silver medallist in Beijing, Jens Oftebro, who took silver in the large hill, and experienced Espen Bjoernstad and Espen Andersen making the world champions a good bet to top the podium.
Germany, with two of the Pyeongchang team back on duty, and Japan, comprising the Watabe brothers – Akito and Yoshito – along with Hideaki Nagai and individual normal hill champion Ryota Yamamoto, will also be in the mix.
France were the best of the rest but, at one minute 27 seconds behind, know the medals are likely be shared among the leading four.
The 4 x 5km cross country leg gets underway at 1900 local time (1100GMT).
(Reporting by Mitch Phillips, editing by Ed Osmond)
