This resulted in victory in the first World Cup race for the man who was by far the best last season. There were then 16 victories and three 2nd places for Riiber during the 19 races in which he participated.
It is likely that the Oslo man will be the clear gold favorite in the individual competitions at the WC in Trondheim later this winter.
Riiber has had his problems since last season, including a knee injury, a stomach virus and the extraction of a wisdom tooth, but he was back on top in Ruka.
– It was good to get going again after a very long run. It’s good to see that it still responds a little, Riiber told Viaplay before elaborating:
– I am standing here today with the same problems that I talked about a few weeks ago. Today I woke up in the middle of the night with a sore throat, and there is a lot of nerves and uncertainty around such things. So that’s why I needed to get started.
Provisional jumping
There was drama before Friday’s race as strong winds made it impossible to jump in Ruka. Thus, Thursday’s provisional jumping round was used as a basis for the cross-country skiing, and there was no disadvantage for Riiber. He jumped the furthest on Thursday.
In the compact event, the rules are such that the leader after the jump race has a six-second lead on second place in the cross-country race. The distance is the same regardless of scoring on the ground, but a limit of a maximum of one and a half minutes has been set, so that the weakest jumpers do not fall too far behind in the cross-country.
An Austrian trio of Franz-Josef Rehrl, Thomas Rettenegger and Johannes Lamparter went out in turn behind Riiber in Friday’s cross-country race over 7.5 kilometers.
Already at the first interval after 1.1 kilometres, Riiber had doubled the lead to Rehrl, who had been joined by Lamparter and Rettenegger. Shortly afterwards, Vinzenz Geiger (Germany) and Ilkka Herola (Finland) also joined the chase group.
Strong cross-country skiing
There were very loose conditions on the Ruka track, but it did not snow during the race. Halfway through the race, Lamparter, Geiger and Herola had managed to close the gap to Riiber.
It was an exciting and close battle in the front field from there, but towards the end Riiber and Geiger managed to get out to the front. Riiber parked Geiger on the run, while Julian Schmid from Germany took 3rd place.
Jørgen Graabak moved up ten places and finished sixth. Andreas Skoglund moved up twelve places and was number eight. Riiber and Graabak both explained that there were heavy and slow conditions on the course.
– It was a tough road, that is. A long 7.5 kilometers. Bad slide, simply. The fresh snow that has arrived was very tough, explained Graabak.
(© NTB)