Japan’s Olympic silver medallist Akito Watabe took the win in his first competition this summer at the 2014 Summer Combined event in Hakuba.

In the general class, Hideaki Nagai took the second place, finishing 37 seconds behind Watabe, followed by Go Yamamoto (+1:28).

Watabe had already been in the lead after the jumping event on Hakuba’s HS 98 hill by setting a jump of 98 metres, giving him 134.4 points at the intermediate point. Hideaki Nagai ranked second with 96 metres and 130.4 points and the intermediate third position went to Taro Yamakawa (93 m; 120 p.).

All participants ran a five kilometre race afterwards in which Akito Watabe started with 16 seconds advantage on Nagai and 58 seconds on Yamakawa. After about 18 minutes of running, the winner was clear: Akito Watabe only needed the sixth fastest time to claim a clear win over Nagai. Go Yamamoto worked his way up to the podium kicked Taihei Kato off by beating him by about 7 seconds. Takehiro Watanabe also had a strong running time of 17:09.0 and claimed a final sixth rank after lying in 12th position after jumping.

There were also competitions held for athletes on junior and student levels, as well as a Ladies Nordic Combined competition. The ladies’ win went to Kaori Iwabuchi who took a clear win 1:36 ahead of Nozomi Maruyama and Saki Kitamura, in the junior and student categories, Taro Yamakawa and Shogo Unegami took the wins.

Source: the official FIS site