Ski Jumping – Four Hills Tournament – Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany – January 1, 2022 Japanese Ryoyu Kobayashi celebrates with a broken trophy after winning REUTERS / Kai Pfaffenbach

January 2 (Reuters) – Japan’s Ryoyu Kobayashi narrowly defeats domestic favorite Markus Eisenbichler for the second time in a row at the Four Hills Ski Jumping Tournament in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.

Kobayashi, who won the first race in Oberstdorf earlier this week, made the 143m and 135.5m jumps on Saturday, scoring 291.2 points, just 0.2 ahead of Eisenbichler. Slovenian Lovro Kos was third with 286 points.

The result means that Kobayashi, who won the tournament in 2018-19, could become the third athlete to win all four competitions in the same season, the second grand slam tournament on four hills.

With the Beijing Winter Olympics on the horizon, Kobayashi’s victory was his third consecutive World Cup victory of the season and fifth overall, overtaking Germany’s Karl Geiger, who finished seventh in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, leading by 696 points overall. sum.

“I’m great, super happy. I was really excited in the first round and very nervous in the second. Given that, my form wasn’t bad,” the 25-year-old told Japan’s Kyodo News.

The next phase of the Four Hills tournament takes place in Austria, on 3 January in Innsbruck and on 5 January in Bischofshofn.

At the Women’s World Cup in Ljubno, Austria’s Marita Kramer secured the opening trophy with 519.4 points after the second and third place in each round of the two-day tournament with 519.4 points.

Defender of the World Cup and local Nika Križnar finished in second place with 515.2 points, and Japan’s Sara Takanashi was third with 513 points after her 61st victory in the World Cup on the second Saturday of the competition.

Kramer leads the overall World Cup standings with 770 points, having finished off the podium only once after nine events this season.

The next World Cup event is scheduled for January 28 in Willingen, Germany.

The Beijing Olympics begin on February 4.

Reporting Critique Sharma in Bengaluru: Edited by Neil Fullick

Our standards: Thomson Reuters Fundamental Principles.