Tokyo, Japan, March 3, 2020: In the two years since finishing sixth at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, Japanese ski jumper Ryoyu Kobayashi has become one of the most successful athletes on the planet.
In the 2018-19 season, the 23-year-old Kobayashi won 13 World Cup events and won all six World Cup individual categories, including overall title, ski flying title and the prestigious Four Hills Tournament.
Kobayashi arrived at PyeongChang 2018 with just one International Ski Federation (FIS) World Cup podium place to his name. He left three weeks later having recorded three top-10 finishes – sixth in the team event, seventh in the normal hill and 10th in the large hill – but, more importantly, having discovered something about himself.
“I met a lot of athletes from other disciplines during PyeongChang 2018 and, with each meeting, a sense of my responsibility as a ski jumper grew on me,” Kobayashi said.
Kobayashi is following a long line of Japanese ski jumping heroes such as Yukio Kasaya, Kazuyoshi Funaki and veteran Noriaki Kasai and plans to make his second Olympic appearance at Beijing 2022 following his debut in Korea.
“I’ve never been to Beijing, but I’m looking forward to going and competing there,” said Kobayashi.
Should he succeed and win a fourth Olympic ski jump gold for Japan, he will be sure to acknowledge the huge influence of his brother. Older by five years, Junshiro Kobayashi made his World Cup debut in 2011 and has been showing his sibling the way ever since.
“We had different interests as children,” Kobayashi junior said with a smile. “But now we share a room during the World Cup season and we play lots of games together.”
Perhaps understandably, the younger Kobayashi started the current season a little slowly, back problems not helping the almost impossible task of matching his extraordinary exploits of 2018/19. But, after failing to step up to the podium in his first four events, he soon got back into the swing of it, winning three of the following six.
“I’m still not 100 per cent,” he said in early February. “But I can still fight at this level.”
Source: www.olympic.org