Nordic Team Gold For Japan

[Mulboyne]

[floatr][/floatr]AFP: Japan end long wait for Nordic world title
Japan's men were the shock winners of the Nordic combined team title at the world championships here on Thursday. The Japanese claimed gold after finishing fifth in the ski jump and winning the cross-country skiing 4x5km relay by the smallest of margins. Germany finished second with the much-fancied Norwegians third. In a tight race to the line in the relay, Japan's team of Yusuke Minato, Taihei Kato, Akito Watabe and Norihoto Kobayashi pipped the Germans by just 0.1 seconds, while Norway finished 3.6 seconds off the pace to take bronze...It was Japan's first team world championship success since 1995, when the inspirational Kenji Ogiwara was behind his country's ascent to the pinnacle of the sport. The Nagano native won Olympic team titles in 1992 and 1994 and world team titles in 1993 and 1995...Since then Japan's Nordic skiers have acquired a reputation for being accomplished ski jumpers but unreliable cross-country skiers...more...

[Greji]

AFP: Japan end long wait for Nordic world title

This is quite a good development for the Japan team. I find it particularly enjoyable as during the so-called reign of Japan's Nordic dominance, the scoring was heavily weighted on jumping with very little allotted for the cross-country leg. Japan and other countries, simply loaded their teams with jumpers and scored medals at ease, regardless of where they finished in the cross-country leg. When they changed the scoring rules, the media in Japan had hernias, screaming that it was an anti-Japanese move prompted only by Japanese dominance. It was in fact a needed rule chance, or this Nordic event would have just been eliminated. Now, with this win, the Japan team can truly claim the gold without any of the nagging questions from before.

[Behan]

Greji, were they going to elimitate it because an event that strongly favored the jumping would almost just be another jumping event? (Sorry if that's an unintelligible sentence. Hope you knows what I mean.)

It will be interetsing how they balance the jumping and skiing for the Olympics.

the United States finished outside the top ten after Bill Demong lost his bib number and was unable to take part in the ski jump.

Bibs and batons. What's next?

I thought I heard that in one of the individual Nordic events (or all?), the race was held first and then the jumps. Isn't it usually the other way around, with the best jumpers getting a head start or time advantage?