(Reuters) – Japan’s Ryoyu Kobayashi claimed his second successive victory in the Four Hills ski jumping tournament in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany with a narrow win over local favourite Markus Eisenbichler.
Kobayashi, who won the first leg in Oberstdorf earlier this week, pulled off jumps of 143m and 135.5m on Saturday to score 291.2 points, only 0.2 ahead of Eisenbichler. Slovenia’s Lovro Kos finished third with 286 points.
The result means a second Four Hills Grand Slam could be on the cards for Kobayashi, who swept the tournament in 2018-19 to become the third athlete to have won all four events in the same season.
With the Beijing Winter Olympics in sight, the win was Kobayashi’s third straight World Cup victory of the season and fifth overall as he leapfrogged Germany’s Karl Geiger, who finished seventh in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, to lead the overall standings with 696 points.
“I’m super, super happy. I was really buzzed in the first round and really nervous in the second. Considering that, my form wasn’t bad,” the 25-year-old was quoted as saying by Japan’s Kyodo News.
The next stage of the Four Hills tournament takes place in Austria, on Jan. 4 in Innsbruck and on Jan. 6 in Bischofshofen.
The Beijing Olympics begin on Feb. 4.
(Reporting by Hritika Sharma in Bengaluru: Editing by Neil Fullick)
