Lamparter hits the big time with world Nordic combined gold in Oberstdorf

Johannes Lamparter blew away the rest of the field to claim Nordic combined World Championship gold in Oberstdorf, adding to this youth world gold won just a month ago.

At 19 years of age, the Austrian becomes the youngest world champion since Norwegian Trond Einar Elden took home the gold medal in 1989 in Lahti, aged just 101 days younger than Lamparter.

Having topped the youth World championships standings back in February, Lamparter continued his scintillating form with a jump of 138.0m in the morning session, as he dealt admirably with the tailwind conditions on the German slopes.

That exquisite jump gave the teenager a 22s cushion ahead of Akito Watabe who jumped 137.5m, while current World Cup leader Jarl Magnus Riiber was a further 15s behind after a jump of 135.0m.

And from there he never looked back, flying out of the blocks in the 10km dash later in the day, extending his lead at every split before finishing 37.1s ahead of Riiber.

The Norwegian managed to overtake his Japanese adversary within the last 900m in Oberstdorf, with the pair within a whisker of each other for much of the sprint event, before the 23-year-old stormed 8.7s ahead by the time they reached the line.

The victory for Lamparter is his first on the world stage, having never experienced standing on top spot of the podium on the World Cup stage prior to the event in Germany, and regular winner Riiber was valiant in defeat to his latest challenger.

"Congratulations to Lamparter today, he really showed his potential and I was impressed," Riiber said.

"Today I wasn’t better than second but I’m happy to be on the podium once again."

Sportsbeat 2021