Normal Hill, Individual, Men

Of the three medalists in the normal hill at the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics, only one, Norway’s Robert Johansson, who had also taken bronze in the large hill individually and gold with the team, returned in 2022. Piotr Żyła of Poland, who had last competed at the Olympics in 2014, was the reigning World Champion, with Germany’s Karl Geiger, who had won silver in the team large hill in 2018, as World runner-up. World Bronze had gone to Anže Lanišek of Slovenia, who was champion in the medium hill at the 2012 Winter Youth Olympics.

Another Norwegian, Marius Lindvik, came out on top of the qualifying round, followed by Johansson and Żyła. Lindvik was the silver medalist in this event at the 2016 Winter Youth Olympics, where he had also taken silver with the cross-country skiing / ski jumping / Nordic combined team. Geiger and Lanišek placed 9th and 15th respectively. The field after the first round of the final was entirely different and was led by Ryoyu Kobayashi of Japan, who had been fourth in qualifying. Kobayashi was seventh in this event in 2018, but had since seen considerable success at the World Cup, and thus his strength in Beijing was not a complete surprise. Second was Slovenia’s Peter Prevc, the runner-up at the 2014 Sochi Olympics, while Kamil Stoch of Poland was third. Stoch was the 2014 Olympic champion in this event, the 2014 and 2018 large hill champion, and a bronze medalist from the 2018 team event. In 2019, he had been World runner-up in the normal hill. Lanišek was 9th, while none of the other favorites made the top ten.

In the second round, Kobayashi managed to rank fifth overall, but it was sufficient to maintain his hold on gold. The winner of this final jump was Austria’s Manuel Fettner, who slid into silver medal position after weaker performances from Prev and Stoch that saw them rank 8th and 13th respectively in the round and 4th and 6th overall. Dawid Kubacki, the 2019 World Champion who had been only eighth in the first round, came back with a second-ranked jump that allowed him to capture the bronze medal. Kubacki had also taken bronze with the large hill team in 2018.