First win this season for Ryoyu Kobayashi
Nov 29, 2021·Ski Jumping
Ryoyu Kobayashi of Japan won the first of two Ski Jumping World Cup competitions in Ruka (FIN) on Saturday. In an exciting final round, the 2018/19 overall World Cup champion claimed the win ahead of Slovenia's Anze Lanisek and Markus Eisenbichler of Germany.
With an amazing final jump of 143 m, Kobayashi could get ahead of Anze Lanisek, who was in the lead after the first round. "I'm very satisfied with my performance today, it was much better again, and I'm happy about the result. My goal for tomorrow is to show another good performance and hopefully, it'll be enough for the win again", said today's winner, for whom this was the 20th victory in the World Cup.
Ryoyu Kobayashi won both competitions in Ruka 2018, he then went on to win the overall World Cup that same season.
Anze Lanisek narrowly missed his first-ever World Cup win once again today. The Slovene took his fifth second place, but the 25-year-old still lacks a win. "It was close today. My first jump was very good, without any mistakes, so that was great. In the second round, I was a little bit too late at the take-off, but it was a good competition for me", Lanisek said.
The third place went to Markus Eisenbichler, who is slowly but surely getting in his best shape. "My shape is getting better and better step by step. The start of the season was not so easy for me, I was not jumping well in the weeks before the opener. Today it went well for me, even if the conditions were tough. I'm on the right track", Eisenbichler explained.
Austria's Stefan Kraft came in fourth, followed by Karl Geiger, who could defend the lead in the overall World Cup with the fifth place. He has now scored 225 points and leads ahead of Kobayashi (180 points) and Halvor Egner Granerud (160 points). Pius Paschke finished on a very good seventh place, Kamil Stoch was eighth.
After being sixth in Nizhny Tagil, Switzerland's Killian Peier could achieve a top result for the second time in a row, he was sixth again today. All four Swiss jumpers could qualify for the final round today, a great result for the team.
The second competition in Ruka starts on Sunday at 4:15 pm CET (Qualification at 2:30 pm).
