Finland's Manninen overwhelming winner at Nordic Combined season's opening
Ahonen jumps into second place in two events
Finnish skiers Hannu Manninen and Anssi Koivuranta opened the Finnish winter sports season on Friday with a double victory at the Nordic Combined World Cup competition at Ruka in the northeastern community of Kuusamo.
Manninen's first place finish appeared certain after his second jump: the first had carried 128 metres, and the second one extended to 120 metres, putting him in a good position for the 15-kilometre cross-country race: he started fourth, just 18 seconds after the winner of the ski jump competition, France's Jason Lamy Chappuis, whose jumps had measured 127.5 and 123 metres.
Also starting ahead of Manninen was Koivuranta and Austria's Michael Gruber; the two shared number-two billing in the ski jumping event. Koivuranta's jumps measured 128.5 and 121 metres respectively.
Manninen managed to overtake the athletes that had started ahead of him already after one kilometre, finishing two and a half minutes ahead of Koivuranta.
In Sunday's sprint event Manninen was only fourth owing to bad performance on the hill, which left him in 30th place before the 7.5 kilometre cross-country race.
In World Cup ski jumping, history was made in Ruka on Saturday, when the winners' yellow vest was worn by three different men on the same day. The reason for this was that two ski jumping events were scheduled for the same day.
The three were Finland's Janne Ahonen, the Czech Republics' Jakub Janda, and Slovenia's Robert Kranjec.
In the first event Ahonen, who wore the vest as the winner of the previous season, finished second, and Kranjec was third.
In the second event, Kranjec was first, taking the vest from Janda. Ahonen was also second in this event.
His good second-place finishes mean that Ahonen is at the top of the standings this winter as well.
In the women's 10-kilometre traditional style cross-country race on Saturday, Norway's Marit Bjørgen proved to be overwhelming, coming in first, with Finland's Virpi Kuitunen in second place.
The two had also finished first and second respectively in the same event just a week earlier at Beitostølen in Norway, except that the gap between the first two had grown from 21 seconds to Saturday's 29. On Sunday, Bjørgen suffered her first loss of the season, when she finished fourth on ten-kilometre free-style event. Czech Katerina Neumannova won, and the best Finnish skier, Kati Venäläinen, was 22nd.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 28.11.2005 - TODAY |
 Finland's Manninen overwhelming winner at Nordic Combined season's opening |
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