Cav's Place

Just under three years since his last participation in the World Cup, Noriaki Kasai tried again now that international ski jumping competitions returned to Japan. However, unlike that previous time, he had to go through the qualification round, and he failed to do so both times, the first attempt being particularly frustrating, since he was the 51st, the first to fail to qualify, by a mere 0.4 points. There was a third competition as well, today, but the Japanese “national group” no longer took part in the qualification, and his lack of recent results obviously means that he doesn’t have the right to participate otherwise.
Then again, even three years ago he failed when he had to go through qualification, but the lower number of entrants for the second competition meant that qualification was no longer necessary. And the few other competitions that he took part in since then also had no qualification rounds, and they were all of a lower level, in fact his return to the Continental Cup last week being the first time he participated in an international competition since the end of 2020. But, despite being 50 and a half and obviously no longer capable of important results, he clearly has no intention to give up completely, so unless he’ll be stopped by a serious injury or illness, which I definitely hope won’t happen, he’ll probably keep trying each year, at least when the competitions will return to Sapporo.