BEIJING, China: Japan’s Ryoyu Kobayashi held his nerve while his rivals lost theirs on Sunday, winning Olympic ski jumping gold on the men’s normal hill in a wild and unpredictable Beijing Games final.
Germany’s World Cup leader Karl Geiger finished 15th in a disastrous performance, while hotly tipped Norwegians Halvor Egner Granerud and Marius Lindvik were also well out of contention.
Kobayashi kept his cool to become the first Japanese ski jumper to win Olympic gold on foreign snow, pulling off jumps of 104.5 and 99.5 meters to finish first on 275.0 points.