Man, I swear trying to follow the Nordic Combined circuit is always a massive pain. It’s never on a consistent channel, the timing is always weird, and half the time you have to watch some questionable live stream just to see the action. But Ramsau is a classic spot, and I had Kristjan Ilves circled on my calendar for this one. He’s usually solid on the smaller hills, and I had a feeling he was going to lay down a jump that would put him right in the mix for the 10k cross-country chase.
I woke up super early, like 4:30 AM early, because of the time difference. I dragged myself into the kitchen, fired up the old laptop, and immediately started scrambling to find a feed that wasn’t buffering every five seconds. I tried three different sites before finally landing on one that was shaky but at least consistent enough to track the big names. This is always the first step in the process: fighting the technology just to see the sport. It’s like half the battle is just getting eyes on the damn hill.
The Jumping Event Chaos
The practice rounds are always fast and furious, but the official jumping competition? That’s where you have to pay attention to every detail, especially the wind compensation scores. I watched patiently as the early jumpers went, but my real focus was on the last flight group—the guys who were wearing the yellow bibs or fighting for the overall standings.
I was specifically tracking Ilves, hoping he would smash one. He stepped up, looked good on the in-run, nailed the take-off, and flew pretty far. Looked like a strong jump, but the landing wasn’t perfectly smooth. I immediately jotted down his distance—something like 97.5 meters—and then waited anxiously for the judges’ scores to pop up on the screen, which, of course, took forever because the graphics feed was lagging behind the actual jump by a good 30 seconds.
This is where the practice part comes in, and this is why I know exactly how this jumping event finished, even when the official broadcast was having a meltdown. See, I wasn’t just sitting there drinking coffee. I was supposed to be finishing up a huge work report that morning, but I had sneaked the laptop onto the corner of the dining room table. When Ilves jumped, my phone suddenly rang—it was a call from the office needing some immediate feedback on a totally unrelated project.
I juggled the phone between my shoulder and ear while frantically trying to keep an eye on the TV screen in the background. My attention was split, meaning I completely missed the official standings update for the next few jumpers, including the guy everyone feared: the Japanese jumper who’s always deadly accurate.
The Data Recovery Mission
Once I hung up, I realized I had only half the story. I knew Ilves had a good jump, placing him around the top five, but I needed to know who held the actual lead going into the cross-country portion. You can’t write a decent recap just by guessing the leader!
So, I dove into my secondary sources. Because the official FIS app sometimes takes forever to load, and I was blocked out of the main broadcast site (they have those irritating geo-restrictions), I had to use two different, slightly sketchier live timing sites and cross-reference them. I tapped away furiously, comparing the scores and distances.
The first site only listed the top five names alphabetically. Useless. The second site, thankfully, had the points total. I quickly calculated the time difference (1 point usually means 4 seconds) to figure out who would start first.
I filtered the data, looking for anyone who scored over 130 points, which is usually the benchmark for winning the jumping event in Ramsau. I checked Ilves’ score again—he was strong, but not strong enough to win the jumping portion. He was firmly in third place, starting 28 seconds back.
I kept scrolling, past the Austrians and the Germans. And there it was, the score that stood out, the one I had missed while arguing about spreadsheets on the phone.
Who won the jumping event?
It was Ryota Yamamoto. He absolutely nailed it. His jump was clean, far, and he had the best style points, giving him the leading score and the coveted pole position going into the 10k race. He was the only one who broke 100 meters, getting 100.5, which is huge on that hill.
I locked down the result, knowing that this early advantage for Yamamoto was the whole story heading into the afternoon. It took me three feeds, two timing sites, and nearly missing a deadline at my real job, but I finally pieced together the full picture of who actually dominated the morning session on the hill. It’s never easy, but hey, that’s how we get the real insider scoop, right? Just messy dedication.