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Ren Nikaido celebrates first World Cup win in Innsbruck
Japan’s Ren Nikaido won the third competition of the Four Hills Tournament at the Bergisel in Innsbruck. The 24-year-old claimed the victory in a thrilling contest, finishing just ahead of Slovenia’s Domen Prevc. Austria’s Stephan Embacher delighted the home crowd by securing third place.
In front of a sold-out crowd of 21,125 spectators, the third stop of the Four Hills Tournament took place under excellent weather conditions. However, the schedule was briefly disrupted at the start when the lift got stuck following the trial run. These are scenes more commonly associated with Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Fortunately, the affected athletes were transported to the athlete’s area in time by shuttle, enabling the competition to begin as planned.
After the first round, an extremely close battle for victory had emerged. Stephan Embacher took the lead with 139.8 points, but four jumpers (Stephan Embacher, Ren Nikaido, Jan Hoerl and Domen Prevc) were separated by just 2.5 points. As a result, the final round promised excitement until the very last jump.
In the end, Ren Nikaido claimed a slightly surprising victory. With jumps of 131 and 128 metres, the Japanese athlete secured the win by a margin of just 0.5 points. It marked the first World Cup victory of his career. After the competition, Nikaido said: “I wasn’t thinking about anything at all. I just jumped as well as I could. Right now, I’m simply speechless.”
Domen Prevc, who had dominated the tournament so far, finished second with jumps of 129.5 and 128 metres. This result means the Slovenian will no longer be able to achieve the rare feat of winning all four events of the Four Hills Tournament. Nevertheless, Prevc extended his lead in the overall standings. With 895.8 points, he now leads Austria’s Jan Hörl by 41.4 points. Hörl finished fourth in Innsbruck with a total of 269.6 points.
“I have to remind myself why I started ski jumping in the first place. You need to enjoy it, relax and do it the way a child would,” Prevc said afterwards, looking ahead to the final competition in Bischofshofen.
Stephan Embacher narrowly missed out on defending his first-round lead in the final. The 19-year-old Austrian finished third with 275.8 points, just 0.7 points short of the day’s victory. With this result, Embacher celebrated the second World Cup podium of his career.
Fifth place went to Felix Hoffmann, who scored 267.2 points with jumps of 126.5 and 126 metres. The top ten was completed by Daniel Tschofenig (255.3 points), Anze Lanisek (253.6), Kacper Tomasiak (252.0), Jason Colby (250.9) and Ryoyu Kobayashi (250.7).