A late sprint on the final bend on Friday earned Norway’s Jarl Magnus Riiber the gold medal in the Nordic combined event as he edged out Ilkka Herola of Finland by four-tenths of a second at the FIS Ski World Championships in Oberstdorf, Germany.
Japan’s Ryota Yamamoto recorded the longest ski jump of the competition to top the standings heading in to the 10km cross-country ski race, but he was soon left behind as the stronger skiers engaged in a tough battle at the front of the field.
On the final lap, reigning champion and world cup leader Riiber was perfectly positioned behind Herola, with Norway’s Jens Luraas Oftebro in third and Japan’s Akito Watabe in fourth, but Watabe was dropped as the front three crested the final hill and the race for the line began.
Photo: AFP
Herola looked to be in the pole position as they swept down the final hill, but Riiber, who won Olympic silver in Pyeongchang in 2018, shifted outside and powered around the last bend to claim the gold medal, raising his arms as he crossed the line just ahead of Herola, with Oftebro a half-second behind the Finn.
In the women’s team event, Austria pipped Slovenia for the gold medal by an extremely slim margin of 1.4 points, with Norway taking the bronze medal a further 15.8 points behind.
With the Slovenians leading going into the final round, Ema Klinec, 22, who won gold in Thursday’s normal hill event, came up just short on the last jump of the competition to finish just behind the Austrians.
Photo: AFP
EXTREME SKIING
AP, YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, California
Two skiers on Sunday last week navigated a thin layer of snow with no margin for error down the precipitous shoulder of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park, and alternately skied and rappelled back to the valley floor in an unusually daring feat.
Jason Torlano, 45, and Zach Milligan, 40, completed the descent in five hours by carefully carving their way in crusty snow and using ropes to rappel several sections of bare rock known as the “death slabs” beneath the iconic face of Half Dome, the Fresno Bee reported on Thursday.
“If you fall to your left or right, you’re definitely dead,” said J.T. Holmes, a professional free skier who is a friend of Torlano’s. “If you fall down the middle, you have a small chance of not falling to your death — but it’s a maybe.”
Snowboarder Jim Zellers is believed to be the first to descend the 243m upper section on the shoulder of the dome in 2000, but no one is known to have attempted the entire 1,463m descent from peak to valley.
Torlano said that he had been dreaming about skiing the dome since his family moved to Yosemite when he was five years old.
He first climbed Half Dome as a youngster, clinging to the same cables tens of thousands of visitors do every year to ascend the final steep pitch up the rounded side of the polished granite feature.
He advanced to become one of an elite group of climbers to scale the sheer granite face using ropes only to catch his fall at least a dozen times. He later became a ranger in the park.
“It’s just always been there,” Torlano told the San Francisco Chronicle. “I’ve been attracted to Half Dome for as long as I can remember.”
After also serving a stint in the US Army, he settled down with his wife and children in a community near Yosemite. He specializes in using ropes to work in high-altitude and dangerous settings.
He said that he tried to ski down Half Dome each of the past three years, but called it off after finding unsuitable snow.
This year, an early storm this month filled Yosemite with fresh powder, including about 7.6cm of snow at the peak of Half Dome.
On Friday last week, he rented a friend’s small plane to study the snow conditions and possible route before calling Milligan, a rock climbing buddy, to join him.
Milligan said that he initially planned to only film Torlano skiing, but decided to make his own descent by carefully side slipping down on skis.
He said that things quickly turned dangerous when he skied over part of one of the cables and lost control before he used an ice ax to stop his slide and was able to right himself.
“I was just trying to stay in control and stay alive,” Milligan said. “You’re on that spine and you don’t have a lot of room for error.”
A sumo star was born in Japan on Sunday when 24-year-old Takerufuji became the first wrestler in 110 years to win a top-division tournament on his debut, triumphing at the 15-day Spring Grand Sumo Tournament in Osaka despite injuring his ankle on the penultimate day. Takerufuji, whose injury had left him in a wheelchair outside the ring, shoved out the higher-ranked Gonoyama at the Edion Arena Osaka to the delight of the crowd, giving him an unassailable record of 13 wins and two losses to claim the Emperor’s Cup. “I did it just through willpower. I didn’t really know what was going
The US’ Ilia Malinin on Saturday produced six scintillating quadruple jumps, including a quadruple Axel, in the men’s free skate to capture his first figure skating world title. The 19-year-old nicknamed the “Quad god,” who is the only skater to land a quadruple Axel in competition, dazzled with an array of breathtakingly executed jumps starting with his quad Axel and including a quadruple Lutz in combination with a triple flip and a quadruple toe loop in combination with a triple toe. He added an unexpected triple-triple combination at the end to earn a world-record 227.79 in the free program for a championship
Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter is being criminally investigated by the IRS, and the attorney for his alleged bookmaker said Thursday that the ex-Los Angeles Dodgers employee placed bets on international soccer — but not baseball. The IRS confirmed Thursday that interpreter Ippei Mizuhara and Mathew Bowyer, the alleged illegal bookmaker, are under criminal investigation through the agency’s Los Angeles Field Office. IRS Criminal Investigation spokesperson Scott Villiard said he could not provide additional details. Mizuhara, 39, was fired by the Dodgers on Wednesday following reports from the Los Angeles Times and ESPN about his alleged ties to an illegal bookmaker and debts well
MLB on Friday announced a formal investigation into the scandal swirling around Shohei Ohtani and his former interpreter amid charges that the Los Angeles Dodgers superstar was the victim of “massive theft.” The Dodgers on Wednesday fired Ippei Mizuhara, Ohtani’s long-time interpreter and close friend, after Ohtani’s representatives alleged that the Japanese two-way star had been the victim of theft, which was reported to involve millions of dollars and link Mizuhara to a suspected illegal bookmaker in California. “Major League Baseball has been gathering information since we learned about the allegations involving Shohei Ohtani and Ippei Mizuhara from the news media,” MLB