Takanobu Okabe

Takanobu Okabe
Takanobu Okabe at Holmenkollen 2006
nation	Japan
birthday	October 26, 1970
place of birth	Shimokawa ,  Japan
size	165 cm
job	employee
Career
society	Snow fire
Pers. Best	217.5 m ( Planica 2006)
status	resigned
End of career	March 2014
Medal table
Olympic medals 1 × 1 × 0 × World Cup medals 1 × 1 × 3 ×
winter Olympics silver 1994 Lillehammer team gold 1998 Nagano team  Nordic World Ski Championships gold 1995 Thunder Bay Normal hill bronze 1995 Thunder Bay team silver 1997 Trondheim team bronze 2007 Sapporo team bronze 2009 Liberec team
Ski jumping world cup / A class jumping
Debut in the World Cup	17th December 1988
World Cup victories (individual)	05 ( details )
World Cup victories (team)	02 ( details )
Overall World Cup	04. ( 1996/97 )
Ski flying world cup	02. (1994/95, 1996/97)
Jump World Cup	06. (1996/97)
Four Hills Tournament	04. (1996/97)
Nordic Tournament	14th (2006)
Podium placements 1. 2. 3.  Single jump 2 7th 8th  Ski flying 3 2 1  Team jumping 2 2 2
Ski jumping Grand Prix
Debut in the Grand Prix	August 28, 1994
Grand Prix victories (individual)	04 ( details )
Overall Grand Prix	01st ( 1994 )
Podium placements 1. 2. 3.  Single jump 4th 0 1
Ski Jumping Continental Cup (COC)
Debut in the COC	0March 4th 1989
COC wins (individual)	05 ( details )
Overall ranking COC	18th ( 2004/05 )
Podium placements 1. 2. 3.  Single jump 5 9 4th

Takanobu Okabe ( Japanese 岡 部 孝 信 , Okabe Takanobu ; born October 26, 1970 in Shimokawa , Hokkaidō ) is a former Japanese ski jumper .

Career

He started ski jumping when he was seven. On December 17, 1988, he played his first World Cup competition in Sapporo , but was rarely used in the following years. He only achieved his first World Cup points in 1993; that year he also took part in the Nordic World Ski Championships in Falun and reached the fourteenth place on the normal hill and twelfth on the large hill. On March 11th of that year he achieved a podium finish for the first time with a second place at the World Cup competition in Lillehammer.

At the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer , he won the silver medal with the Japanese team. in the summer season that followed, he won the overall ranking of the Summer Grand Prix, which he jumped for the first time . At the 1995 World Championships in Thunder Bay , he was surprisingly world champion on the normal hill, and he also won bronze with the team. His first victory in a World Cup competition was on December 7, 1996 in Kuusamo, Finland. He achieved most of his victories on ski flying hills - he won in 1997 in Vikersund and Planica, and the following year in Tauplitz .

In the overall World Cup, Okabe reached seventh place in 1993/94, fifth the following year and fourth place in 1997/98. With the Japanese team he won another silver medal at the 1997 World Cup in Trondheim , but then his star began to decline. Okabe is a very petite and small jumper, which gave him advantages especially in updrafts and on flying hills. After the FIS decided to calculate the permissible ski lengths of the athletes in proportion to their body size in order to compensate for these anatomically conditioned competitive advantages, Okabe had to jump with significantly shortened skis and from then on only rarely made it to the top of the world.

At the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, he was called to the Japanese squad. On the large hill he surprisingly reached sixth place, and so he was nominated in a controversial decision in place of Noriaki Kasai for the Japanese team, with which he then also won the gold medal.

In the following years, Okabe was only rarely able to build on his successes; often he was not even in the World Cup, but was only nominated for the Continental Cup , the "second league" of ski jumpers.

Since the 2004/05 season, however, he was back in the squad of the Japanese team. In the 2005/06 season he finished sixth in the Four Hills Tournament and, with 500 points, twelfth in the overall World Cup. He was also able to draw attention to himself again with some good placings such as fourth place in Oberstdorf and two podium finishes in Sapporo.

In the 2006/07 season, Okabe was less successful and only reached 52nd place in the overall World Cup, but was able to qualify for the 2007 World Cup in Sapporo. With the Japanese team he won the bronze medal in the team competition on the side of Noriaki Kasais , Daiki Itōs and Shōhei Tochimotos .

After an equally weak 2007/08 season (63rd place with 16 points), he had no starting place in the Japanese World Cup team at the beginning of the 2008/2009 season. Okabe did his first job in January 2009 at the Olympic dress rehearsal in Vancouver. He returned to the Japanese team by consistently placing in the top 20 and was finally nominated for the 2009 World Cup . As in 2007, he won bronze with the team there.

On March 10, 2009, he surprisingly won the World Cup competition in Kuopio, Finland. At the age of 38, he was crowned the oldest winner of a world cup competition . This record lasted until January 11, 2014, when Noriaki Kasai won a ski flying World Cup on the Kulm . At 42 years and 86 days, Okabe was the oldest athlete to ever take part in a World Cup competition, until Noriaki Kasai replaced him in this record when he competed in the 2014/15 season. Okabe set his record on January 20, 2013 when he competed in his home competition in Sapporo. A week earlier he had taken second place in the Continental Cup jumping from the same hill - his first podium in this competition in four years. Okabe was nominated for the Japanese team for the Four Hills Tournament 2013/14 . Thus, for the first time since March 2010, he was part of the Japanese World Cup team outside of Japan. However, he failed to qualify at all four tour stations and therefore did not take part in any competition.

On March 11, 2014, he announced that he would end his career after the competitions in Sapporo on March 21 and 22. After the departure of Hiroya Saitō, he takes over his coaching position at Team Snowbrand.

successes

World Cup victories in individual

No.	date	place	Type
1.	December 7, 1996	Kuusamo	Large hill
2.	February 8, 1997	Bad Mitterndorf	Ski jump
3.	March 22, 1997	Planica	Ski jump
4th	March 1, 1998	Vikersund	Ski jump
5.	March 10, 2009	Kuopio	Large hill

World Cup victories in the team

No.	date	place	Type
1.	March 27, 1993	Planica	Large hill
2.	February 8, 1997	Lahti	Large hill

Individual Grand Prix victories

No.	date	place	Type
1.	August 28, 1994	Hinterzarten	Normal hill
2.	September 1, 1994	Predazzo	Normal hill
3.	5th September 1994	Stams	Normal hill
4th	17th August 1997	Trondheim	Large hill

Continental Cup wins in singles

No.	date	place	Type
1.	January 16, 1994	Sapporo	Large hill
2.	September 20, 1997	Hakuba	Large hill
3.	January 15, 1998	Sapporo	Normal hill
4th	January 9, 2009	Sapporo	Normal hill
4th	January 11, 2009	Sapporo	Large hill

statistics

World Cup placements

season	space	Points
1992/93	24.	029
1993/94	07th	529
1994/95	05.	821
1995/96	33.	151
1996/97	04th	941
1997/98	16.	385
1998/99	38.	102
1999/00	33.	130
2000/01	49.	057
2001/02	59.	018th
2004/05	49.	057
2005/06	12.	500
2006/07	52.	042
2007/08	63.	016
2008/09	26th	227
2009/10	82.	002

Grand Prix placements

season	space	Points
1994	01.	747
1995	12.	824
1996	07th	130
1997	04th	227
1998	22nd	062
1999	21st	040
2001	50.	009
2005	49.	015th
2006	27.	094
2007	38.	052
2008	66.	011
2009	66.	011
2013	84.	003

Hill records

place	country	Expanse	set up on	Record up
Trondheim	Norway	119.0 m ( HS : 140 m)	March 13, 1993	February 20, 1994
Lillehammer	Norway	119.0 m ( HS : 140 m)	March 11, 1993	March 11, 1993
Stams	Austria	110.5 m ( HS : 115 m)	5th September 1994	September 3, 1995
Murau	Austria	123.5 m ( HS : 125 m)	January 9, 1995	February 18, 1996
Falun	Sweden	100.0 m ( HS : 100 m)	February 4, 1995	March 13, 1996
Bad Mitterndorf / Tauplitz	Austria	205.0 m ( HS : 225 m)	February 8, 1997	January 31, 2003
Vikersund	Norway	194.0 m ( HS : 225 m)	March 1, 1998	February 11, 2000
Kuopio	Finland	120.0 m ( HS : 127 m)	March 3, 1998	March 4, 1998

Web links

• Takanobu Okabe in the database of the International Ski Federation (English)
• Takanobu Okabe on Olympic.org  - The Official website of the Olympic movement (English)
• Takanobu Okabe in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} 88/89 FIS WORLD CUP SKI-JUMPING. 5th World Cup Competition. skijump-db.net, archived from the original on April 7, 2005 ; Retrieved January 12, 2014 (English, date of the competition not November 17, 1988, as stated in the source, but December 17, 1988). 
2. ↑ Overview of the overall winners at www.berkutschi.com , accessed on January 12, 2012.
3. ↑ Takanobu Okabe on tour. Berkutschi skijumping, December 22, 2013, accessed December 25, 2013 .