Large Hill, Individual, Men

The quality of the Large Hill event was considerably higher than in the Normal hill one week before. The competition was totally dominated by Matti Nykänen, the silver medalist from the Normal hill. In the first round he made an impressive 116.0 m jump, nine meters longer than his closest opponent, the winner from the Normal hill Jens Weißflog. Austrian Armin Kogler, the best ski jumper at the 1982 World Championships with one gold and one bronze, revenged himself after his poor showing in the Normal hill by lying third.

In the second round, Kogler, starting as number 6, took an early lead and kept his position until Jari Puikkonen, the bronze winner from the Normal hill, took over the lead with a decent jump of 102.0 m. Then the US representative Jeff Hastings, lying 12th after the first round, surprised with a jump of 107.0 m, and suddenly an American was in a position for a medal. But the 19-year old Czech Pavel Ploc, who in 1983 had set a new world record of 181.0 m in his home town Harrachov, answered with a jump of 109.0 m and took over the lead with Weißflog and Nykänen yet to come. Weißflog improved half a meter from his first jump and was now first, over ten points ahead of Ploc. Nykänen, with his big lead after the first jump, could now secure his first Olympic gold medal with a safe jump of around 100 m, but the young Finn was not the type to make safe jumps. He once again made the best and longest jump of the round, 111.0 m. His victory margin was an impressive 17.5 points, the biggest victory margin in the history of Olympic ski jumping. Jeff Hastings fourth place was the best American placing in ski jumping for 60 years, only beaten by Anders Haugen’s bronze medal from 1924. For the ski-jump-loving nation of Norway, the event was described as a national catastrophe. Norway’s best jumper ended in 18th place, the nation’s worst ever Olympic ski jumping performance.