Yukiya Sato claims the home win

Yukiya Sato won the first competition at the FIS World Cup in Sapporo. The 24-year-old took the win in difficult conditions on the Okurayama hill with jumps of 137.5 m and 138.5 m. Austria's Stefan Kraft and Poland's Dawid Kubacki came in second and third.

It almost seemed a bit like an apology when today's winner pointed out in the interview that he had luck on his side, but Yukiya Sato definitely deserved this win on the first day of the 2020 World Cup in Sapporo. The "little giant" as the 1.6 m tall Sato likes to call himself, had the luck today that you need to win in Sapporo.

But the foundation for Sato's second win this season were two very good jumps that earned him a lead of 10.2 points over Stefan Kraft. "The wind is always pretty strong here in Sapporo, today I had the luck you need. My jumps were good today, but actually I'm not yet strong enough to be among the best constantly. For example, I still have to improve my judges' marks. The wind really helped me today", explained Sato, who set an amazing new hill record last weekend in Zakopane and took his first-ever World Cup win in Nizhny Tagil (RUS) last December.

That Sato came out on top today and not Ryoyu Kobayashi, who was clearly leading after the first half of the competition, was also due to the difficult conditions today, especially in the second round. Kobayashi simply had no chance to jump far and despite his halftime lead, he finished only 15th. Ryoyu Kobayashi experienced the bad side of the Okurayama hill in the final round today: The tailwind that leaves the athletes no chance. Karl Geiger shared a similar fate today. He was fourth after the first round, also lost ground in the final and came in 11th overall. In addition, he also lost the yellow bib of the overall World Cup leader to Austria's Stefan Kraft.

Despite the difficult conditions, Kraft was able to show a strong performance today: "I'm really satisfied. The trip to Japan is always very nice, I really like this hill and I'm very happy about the second place. It was a difficult competition because sometimes there was more headwind and sometimes less and you need some headwind when you start from gate 5. In Sapporo you always need a bit of luck, you know that when you come here. It feels great to wear the yellow bib, but the season is still long", said the new overall World Cup leader.

Dawid Kubacki extended his amazing streak of podium finishes in third today. This season's 4-Hills-Tournament winner was on the podium for the 10th time in a row, a remarkable run in Ski Jumping. "It was a hard day on the hill. The conditions were different than during qualification. My jumps were fine, although my take-off was too early. Before Ryoyu's final jump I didn't expect a podium. I know that he can jump very well and I was certain he will jump long enough to win or at least be on the podium", said Kubacki.

Estonian Artti Aigro could score some World Cup points today in 25th and Canada's Mackenzie Boyd-Clowes also made the cut for the final round and finished 29th.

Newly crowned Junior Olympic Champion Marco Woergoetter of Austria had a strong World Cup debut. In his very first appearance in the World Cup, the 17-year-old came in on a good 22nd place.
Woergoetter's teammate Jan Hoerl ended the competition in fifth, but was then disqualified because his suit did not meet the rules and so he ended up 30th.

The performance of the day was shown by the Prevc brothers: Domen, Peter and Cene Prevc came in fourth, seventh and 19th. This can probably be called a world record, especially considering the difficult conditions today. A great job by the Prevc brothers.

After the first competition in Sapporo, Stefan Kraft leads the overall ranking of the World Cup with 963 points, eight points ahead of Karl Geiger (955 points) and Poland's Dawid Kubacki (884 points).

The second competition in Sapporo starts on Sunday already at 2 am CET.

Full results