Winter Olympics - Ski jumper Ryoyu Kobayashi produces dominant performance to claim gold in men’s normal hill.

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. 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. Ad/> 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.

Beijing 2022Beijing spotlight: Kobayashi out to make ski jumping’s popularity explode in Japan02/02/2022 AT 13:29 It blew previous leader Peter Prevec out of the water, after the Slovenian earned 139.2 points with a jump of 103 metres. Watch jubilant celebrations as Bogataj clinches ski jumping gold at Beijing 2022 Beijing spotlight: Kobayashi out to make ski jumping’s popularity explode in Japan Prevec missed out on a podium finish by finishing just 0.5 points behind Kubacki, as his eighth-place finish in the final round ultimately cost the Slovenian a medal. As for Kobayashi, he had the advantage of going last in the final round, and registered a score of 129.6 to reach that final tally of 275.0 points.