So Seefeld again. When Hermann Weinbuch was still a young guy, strong as a bear, full of juice, he ran everything here in the ground. Twice he became world champion in Seefeld, in individual competition and in the team together with Thomas Müller and Hubert Schwarz. That's 34 years ago. There were Tyrolean festival for the German Kombinierer.

It was as if Weinbuch, now the eternal national coach of the Combine, then designed a kind of gold track in the Austrian winter sports resort for the DSV: Eric Frenzel alone has celebrated eleven World Cup successes in a row in Seefeld.

Sure, the ski jumpers in Nordic skiing are also hopefuls from a German point of view, Markus Eisenbichler, Andreas Wellinger, Richard Freitag, all good guys, but not necessarily winning jumpers. However, the German Skiing Association has always been able to rely on the combined athletes and guaranteed gold medals. So why should not it go on like this at the Nordic World Ski Championships, which starts on Thursday? Well, why not? Maybe because of Jan Magnus Riiber.

Ten of 15 races finished first

Riiber, only 21 years young, is the star of this winter. The Norwegian has stolen the success spoiled DSV-combiners this season so far the show. So far, there have been 15 starts in the winter of 2018/2019, ten times the winner was Riiber. For Rydzek, a four-time gold medalist at the last World Cup, also decorated with Olympic gold last year, there was only one victory of the season left. No question, who dominated the first jump training before the competition on Friday: Riiber, of course.

DPA

Head coach Hermann Weinbuch

A year ago, however, the situation was not so dissimilar. Before the Olympic Games in Pyeongchang put Germany's flagship winter athletes in the form of low, from the end of the era Weinbuch was already the speech: In the end, Frenzel, Rydzek and Co had won three times gold. The medalists Johannes Rydzek, Gold, Fabian Rießle, Silver, Eric Frenzel, were named Bronze in the competition of the large hill.

The experience of Pyeongchang characterizes the expectation in front of Seefeld. According to the motto: Mag Riiber is still so superior in the World Cup, Weinbuch's athletes will get it to the top event of the year somehow. Especially as the shape curve rises at Rydzek, also Rießle and young Vinzenz Geiger were last in the track. But this time it is not that easy: Riiber is extremely strong nerves despite his young age, so far he wiggled in the winter almost never, from the jump as strong as in the track - a worthy successor to the great Norwegian combine Geir Andersen, Torbjörn Lökken, Fred Börre Lundberg and Bjarte Engen Vik. He is the favorite.

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The medal trio of Pyeongchang

The unbelievable number of 17 gold medals at Olympic Games and World Championships has been won by the DSV-Kombinierer under the coach Weinbuch. There is so much talk of the German sport biathlon, it would have to carry the Nordic Combined this title. Weinbuch has spent 23 long years of coaching in the service of the association. Whether the 58-year-old continues to Seefeld, he leaves open. Under him Rydzek has risen to the most successful German participant in the World Cup history of Nordic skiing, more successful than Jens Weißflog or Sven Hannawald, the most successful combiner of all World Cup participants, he is anyway. In Lahti two years ago, he has won wherever he competed. That he leaves the field to Riiber so easy, you can not really imagine.

Rydzek, Sportsman of the Year 2017, is now 27 years old. It's the age when Weinbuch ended his active career. At that time he said goodbye with Team World Championship gold and bronze in singles. Farewell? This is not yet an issue for Rydzek. There is still so much to win, and in the ranking of the most successful participants in World Ski Championships are still 16 names in front of him. They are the biggest ones: Marit Björgen, Jelena Wälbe, Björn Dählie, Gunde Svan, Sixten Jernberg. You want to be part of it.

There are still goals. For example, in the next few days challenge Jan Magnus Riiber. In Seefeld, where they almost always win.