Masahiko Harada (ski jumper)

Masahiko Harada
nation	Japan
birthday	May 9, 1968
place of birth	Kamikawa ,  Japan
Career
society	Yukijirushi Nyūgyō
Pers. Best	197 m ( Planica 1999)
status	resigned
End of career	2006
Medal table
Olympic medals 1 × 1 × 1 × World Cup medals 2 × 3 × 1 ×
winter Olympics silver 1994 Lillehammer team gold 1998 Nagano team bronze 1998 Nagano Large hill  Nordic World Ski Championships gold 1993 Falun Normal hill gold 1997 Trondheim Large hill silver 1997 Trondheim Normal hill silver 1997 Trondheim team silver 1999 Ramsau team bronze 1999 Ramsau Normal hill
Ski jumping world cup / A class jumping
Debut in the World Cup	January 24, 1987
World Cup victories (individual)	09 ( details )
World Cup victories (team)	03 ( details )
Overall World Cup	04. ( 1997/98 )
Ski flying world cup	08. (1998/99)
Jump World Cup	02. (1997/98)
Four Hills Tournament	04. ( 1992/93 )
Podium placements 1. 2. 3.  Single jump 9 3 9  Team jumping 3 2 2
Ski jumping Grand Prix
Debut in the Grand Prix	August 28, 1994
Grand Prix victories (individual)	10 ( details )
Grand Prix victories (team)	02 ( details )
Overall Grand Prix	01. ( 1997 , 1998 )
Podium placements 1. 2. 3.  Single jump 10 3 1  Team jumping 2 1 0

Masahiko Harada ( Japanese 原田 雅 彦 , Harada Masahiko ; born May 9, 1968 in Kamikawa , Hokkaidō ) is a former Japanese ski jumper and today's ski jumping coach. Because of his cheerful disposition in the 1990s, he was not only one of the most popular athletes in his discipline in Japan.

Career

Harada started ski jumping at the age of nine. He had his first World Cup appearance in 1987 in his native Sapporo . At the Nordic World Ski Championships in 1993 in Falun , Sweden , he was surprisingly world champion on the normal hill. Harada was a rather fickle jumper who often only managed one good jump in competition, and so for years he was more likely to be found in the midfield. His first World Cup victory was on December 8, 1995 in Villach . In total, he won four World Cup competitions in the 1995/96 season and was fifth overall. The following World Cup season was disappointing for him, his best result was a third place. At the World Championships in Trondheim , however, he was surprisingly world champion on the large hill.

Harada won the overall ranking of the 1997 and 1998 Summer Grand Prix . The following World Cup season 1997/98 was the most successful of his career for him: He won five individual competitions and was fourth overall. At the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano , he won the bronze medal on the large hill. With his second jump he reached the daily best distance of 136 meters and landed beyond the range of the video distance measurement. Later re-measurements showed that Harada had reached 137.5 meters, and so he would have received the silver medal.

In the following years he rarely achieved podium finishes. Repeatedly he announced his withdrawal, but then returned. His last World Cup competition for the time being was on December 15, 2002 in Titisee-Neustadt, after which he jumped in the Continental Cup , the "second league" of ski jumpers. He can still be seen often at extraordinary individual competitions in Japan.

Harada was surprisingly at the start of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin . He also survived the qualification for jumping on the normal hill, but was disqualified because the skis were too long.

Harada was a member of the Japanese team in almost all major competitions in the 1990s. In 1994 he became a tragic figure at the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer : before his jump, the Japanese team led far ahead of the German. As the final jumper, Harada would have had to reach a distance of only 105 meters to help Japan win gold, but after a completely unsuccessful jump, in which he went from V-position to gliding flight shortly after jumping, he landed at only 97 .5 m, leaving Japan only with the silver medal. At the 1998 Winter Olympics, however, he sharpened this gap again: with Takanobu Okabe , Kazuyoshi Funaki and Hiroya Saitō , he won gold and thus became a Japanese folk hero. At world championships, Harada won silver with the Japanese team in Trondheim in 1997 and in Ramsau in 1999.

After the 2005/06 season , he finally ended his career. Before that, in February he was able to secure a starting place for the 2006 Winter Olympics , but was disqualified from the normal hill after the first round.

Coaching career

When coach Hiroya Saitō replaced head coach Keisuke Tomii in 2006 , Harada received the vacated post of coach of Yukijirushi Nyūgyō's team.

successes

World Cup victories in individual

No.	date	place	Type
1.	December 8, 1995	Villach	Normal hill
2.	February 18, 1996	Iron Mountain	Large hill
3.	March 1, 1996	Lahti	Large hill
4th	March 3, 1996	Lahti	Large hill
5.	December 8, 1997	Villach	Normal hill
6th	December 12, 1997	Harrachov	Normal hill
7th	December 21, 1997	Engelberg	Large hill
8th.	January 11, 1998	Ramsau	Normal hill
9.	March 13, 1998	Trondheim	Large hill

World Cup victories in the team

No.	date	place	Type
1.	March 27, 1993	Planica	Large hill
2.	March 2, 1996	Lahti	Large hill
3.	March 1, 1996	Park City	Large hill

Individual Grand Prix victories

No.	date	place	Type
1.	August 28, 1996	Predazzo	Large hill
2.	September 1, 1996	Stams	Normal hill
3.	August 14, 1997	Courchevel	Large hill
4th	August 24, 1997	Hinterzarten	Normal hill
5.	August 27, 1997	Predazzo	Large hill
6th	August 9, 1998	Stams	Normal hill
7th	August 11, 1998	Predazzo	Large hill
8th.	August 16, 1998	Hinterzarten	Normal hill
9.	September 13, 1998	Hakuba	Large hill
10.	September 9, 2001	Hakuba	Large hill

statistics

World Cup placements

season	space	Points
1989/90	52.	0003
1991/92	29	0024
1992/93	16.	0046
1993/94	15th	0270
1994/95	59.	0027
1995/96	05.	0982
1996/97	29	0156
1997/98	04th	1120
1998/99	09.	0720
1999/00	11.	0545
2000/01	26th	0167
2001/02	38.	0097

Hill records

place	country	Expanse	set up on	Record up
Falun	Sweden	92.5 m ( HS : 100 m)	February 27, 1993	February 4, 1995
Villach	Austria	99.0 m ( HS : 98 m)	December 8, 1995	December 8, 2001
Kuusamo	Finland	142.5 m ( HS : 142 m)	February 7, 1996	November 29, 2002
Iron Mountain	United States	131.5 m ( HS : 130 m)	February 18, 1996	February 18, 1996
Iron Mountain	United States	140.0 m ( HS : 130 m)	February 18, 1996	current
Lahti	Finland	127.0 m ( HS : 130 m)	March 3, 1996	March 7, 1997
Garmisch-Partenkirchen	Germany	121.0 m ( HS : 140 m)	December 31, 1997	January 1, 1998
Garmisch-Partenkirchen	Germany	122.0 m ( HS : 140 m)	January 1, 1998	January 1, 1999
Kuopio	Finland	135.0 m ( HS : 127 m)	March 4, 1998	February 22, 2016
Trondheim	Norway	131.0 m ( HS : 140 m)	March 9, 1999	March 9, 1999
Stams	Austria	113.5 m ( HS : 115 m)	August 22, 1999	August 22, 1999

Private

Masahiko Harada has been married since 1994 and has two children. He lives in Sapporo .

Web links

• Masahiko Harada in the database of the International Ski Federation (English)
• Masahiko Harada in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Masahiko Harada on Olympic.org  - The Official website of the Olympic movement (English)
• Masahiko Harada in the database of wyniki-skoki.hostingasp.pl (Polish)
• Masahiko Harada in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ralf Drescher: When Jens Weißflog brought Harada to despair. In: handelsblatt.com . February 26, 2010, accessed January 4, 2016 . 
2. ↑ Lars Spannagel: When Harada crashed. In: tagesspiegel.de . February 11, 2010, accessed January 4, 2016 . 
3. ^ Masahiko Harada - From Meltdown to Marvelous. (No longer available online.) In: olympics30.com. Archived from the original on January 4, 2016 ; accessed on January 4, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
4. ^ Ski Jumping at the 2006 Torino Winter Games: Men's Normal Hill, Individual. In: sports-reference.com. February 11, 2006, accessed January 4, 2016 . 
5. ↑ skispringen.com: skispringen.com: Harada new head coach in Japan? In: skispringen.com. Retrieved January 4, 2016 .