December 4, 2005 – Todd Lodwick (Steamboat Springs, CO) earned his first nordic combined World Cup top-5 finish of the young season Saturday while Bill Demong (Vermontville, NY) had his first top-10 in a combined event on the 1994 Olympic venues.

Defending World Cup champion Hannu Manninen of Finland, fourth in jumping, stormed to victory by more than a minute over former World Cup champ Felix Gottwald of Austria.

Lodwick was sixth in jumping and moved up to fourth, 1:39.1 back of Manninen. Demong, 15th in jumping, had a top-10 time in the race for the third straight World Cup and finished 10th after a crash in the final kilometer heading back into the stadium as he was battling for a top-5 placing.

“Todd’s not jumping as well as he can,” said jumping Head Coach Lasse Ottesen, “but he’s getting there. He still has some small things here and there that we work on…but I’m happy with the way things are going.”

He said Demong lost several places after the crash as skiers behind him scrambled past as he regained his footing. “It was disappointing but both of them were top 10 and we’ve got things going into a good direction, so this was a good day,” he said.

The event was moved from Trondheim because of poor snow. The weekend schedule concludes Sunday with a combined sprint.

WARSTEINER NORDIC COMBINED WORLD CUP
Lillehammer, NOR – Dec. 3, 2005
HS131/15K
1. Hannu Manninen, FIN, (4/3)
2. Felix Gottwald, AUT, (22/2) 1:18.1
3. Ronny Ackermann, GER, (16/4) 1:22.2
4. Todd Lodwick, Steamboat Springs, Colo., (6/16T) 1:39.1
5. Georg Hettich, GER, (7/16T) 1:40.1
–
10. Bill Demong, Vermontville, N.Y., (15/8) 1:57.0