Winter Olympics 2022: Ryoyu Kobayashi wins Gold ends 50-year Normal hill drought for Japan in Ski jumping Since 1972.

Kobayashi had a near-perfect jump in the first round to take the lead, and registered a score of 129.6 with his second effort to reach a final tally of 275.0 points.

It was only Japan’s second gold medal in ski jumping history and their first in 40 years.

Austria's Manuel Fettner took silver, Poland's take home Bronze.

Japanese ski jumper Ryoyu Kobayashi lived up to sky-high expectations by producing a dominant performance to claim gold in the men's normal hill event at Beijing 2022, becoming the first from his Japan to win the event since Yukio Kasaya in 1972..

Kobayashi held a big lead after a near-perfect jump in the first round and then did enough with his second effort to hold off Austria's Manuel Fettner for the gold.

Kobayashi finished with 275.0 points ahead of Fettner in second with 270.8. Poland’s Dawid Kubacki took home bronze.

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Kobayashi has been a dominant force on the ski jumping World Cup, becoming only the third man in history to win all four events of the Four Hills tournament in 2019.

And he did most of the hard work in achieving his first Olympic gold medal with a superb first jump that saw him record 145.4 points and a distance of 104.5 metres to go first in the standings.

Ski Jumper Ryoyu Kobayashi makes history, wins Gold for Japan for Normal hill title in 50 years since 1972.

It was only Japan’s second gold medal in ski jumping history and their first winter Olympic medal in 50 years.

Kobayashi is only the third jumper from outside Europe to win gold in an individual ski jumping competition, an event that has been in the Winter Olympics since the first edition in 1924.
The other two are Kasaya and another Japanese jumper, Kazuyoshi Funaki, who earned gold on the large hill at the 2018 Olympics.

Defending champion Andreas Wellinger of Germany missed the Games due to recent positive Covid-19 test, while the German’s World Cup leader Karl Geiger came in China into No. 1 world Jumper, he managed only 15th.

"I can't believe it, I had a great performance today, two perfect jumps," he said. “Nothing special I was thinking about before, ."

“I had only good feelings when I was performing,” he said. “At the last Olympics, I realized many things that I was missing so this time I did what I had to do. This is why I got the victory.”

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Via - Eurosport.com