Large Hill, Individual, Men

As on the normal hill, Austrian Michael Hayböck was the leader in the qualifying round, but he again walked away empty-handed after the final. Wind conditions proved to be difficult to handle for the top athletes who were seeded directly into the final. The strong, fluctuating winds resulted in high figures for the newly introduced wind compensation factor. After the first round, Kamil Stoch from Poland, who had already won the gold medal on the normal hill a few days prior, was again leading the field with 139.0 m and a score of 143.4 points after what turned out to be the best jump of the competition. A surprise second was Japanese veteran Noriaki Kasai, competing in his record seventh Olympics, with the same distance but a slightly lower score, leading German Severin Freund by just 0.4 points.

In the second round, German Marinus Kraus, way behind in the intermediate ranking, had a jump of 140.0 m to take the lead. The next to beat his overall score was Norwegian Anders Fannemel, who eventually placed fifth, behind German Severin Freund in fourth place. Slovenian Peter Prevc, silver medalist on the normal hill, was next to take the lead with the best jump of the second round. As the penultimate jumper, Kasai made a jump of 133.5 m, taking the lead with a combined score of 277.4. Stoch’s final jump of 132.5 m and 135.3 points was only the fourth best of the final round. After a moment of uncertainty, the Pole was declared the winner by 1.3 points to win his second gold medal of the Games even though Kasai jumped one meter further over the two rounds. Stoch became the third man to win both individual ski jumping events at one edition of the Olympic Winter Games after Finn Matti Nykänen (1988) and Swiss Simon Ammann (2002 and 2010). Kasai won the silver, his second medal 20 years after a silver in the 1994 team event at Lillehammer, and Prevc the bronze medal.

Potential medal contenders Thomas Morgenstern (AUT), Robert Kranjec (SLO), Thomas Diethart (AUT) and Andreas Wellinger (GER) failed to qualify for the final round, finishing outside the top 30. Simon Ammann, double gold medalist in 2002 and 2010, finished a disappointing 23rd.