Takanashi and Kobayashi secure Japanese double at ski jumping World Cup

Japan's Sara Takanashi claimed a 60th ski jumping World Cup success after two leaps of the highest order in Rasnov.

Takanashi excelled on the Romanian runway with jumps of of 92m and 99m to see her claim 239.2 points, some 6.3 points ahead of second-placed Silje Opseth of Norway.

The 24-year-old was dominant from start to finish to build on her second-placed finish in Thursday's event, with Slovenia's Nika Kriznar finishing in third after her success the day before.

Takanashi has come into form at exactly the right time of the season, with the World Championships getting underway in Oberstdorf next week, and the Japanese star was delighted with her performance in Rasnov.

"My technique is getting better and better so I am very satisfied with both the result and the jumps," said Takanashi.

"The level of women's ski jumping is getting higher, so it is more and more difficult to get on the podium."

Opseth made it four successive World Cup podiums after jumps of 90.5m and 97m in Romania, while Kriznar, who holds onto the yellow bib as the overall World Cup leader after jumps of 88m and 92.5m to score 228.6 points, struggled to deal with the conditions on the runway.

"It was pretty windy, it was not easy for me, I did not manage to deliver my best jumps. All the more I am happy with another podium result" Kriznar said.

Kriznar's lead at the top has been cut to just five points after Friday's action as she sits on 611 points, just ahead of Takanashi on 606 points while Opseth rounds off the top three on 477.

It was double joy for Japan after the men's event, as Ryoyu Kobayashi secured the win in peculiar circumstances in Romania, when Halvor Egner Granerud got disqualified from the competition.

The Norwegian star looked set to claim a 12th World Cup victory of the season in Rasnov, only to be dumped out of the competition due to a non-regular suit, with Markus Eisenbichler falling to the same fate.

After the event, Eisenbichler explained the debacle, which saw the top two athletes heading into the event banished from the leaderboard.

"I wasn't that good in the first jump and you don't have time to change," the German explained.

"You sweat a lot in a suit and then I ran up again and the inspector upstairs thought I was wearing a different suit, which would have been logical.

"Sweating caused the foam to expand and the suit was too big. But I'm not sad about that, something like that happens when you don't have time to move."

That left Kobayashi with the chance to take top spot on the podium for the second time this year, and the 24-year-old made no mistake, executing jumps of 94m and 98.5m to claim a grand total of 257.9 points.

Kamil Stoch produced a performance worthy of his first World Cup podium in four events with jumps of 92.5m and 97.5m to earn 256.3 points, while Karl Geiger finished third with measurements of 94.5m and 96.5m to finish 2.2 points behind the winner.

Despite finishing 29th and 30th respectively, Granerud and Eisenbichler still sit top of the overall standings after 22 events of the season, with the former on 1544 points and the latter on 1018.

Stoch's second-place finish cements his number three spot with 944 points, while Kobayashi's victory propels him up to eighth in the overall standings.

Sportsbeat 2021