Cav's Place

After a particularly good end of the 2023-2024 season, which I wrote about at the time, and one more participation last season, in the second competition from Sapporo, Noriaki Kasai once again tried to compete in the Ski Jumping World Cup, still in Sapporo, but unfortunately failed to qualify both times. There were an unusually high number of participants, 68, so finishing 55th in Friday’s qualifying round and 56th in today’s means that he was actually ahead of more jumpers than when he successfully qualified last year, but that doesn’t make any real difference. And I don’t see how he could make another attempt in another location, seeing as now Japan easily has enough jumpers with better results for two national teams and therefore couldn’t enter him elsewhere, so this season will end up being the first one since the 2022-2023 one when he won’t participate in any actual World Cup round, the difference being that, as I wrote at the time, in that case it was a failed attempt to return to the World Cup after two years away from international competitions, while now it’s a failed attempt to at least remain where he was last year, and quite a crash compared to that, admittedly shockingly good, period from the start of 2024. Still, the attempt does count towards the records, so those for most appearances and oldest competitor got extended yet again, and as long as his body won’t completely fail him and he’ll still manage to obtain the required results in the Continental Cup to allow him to enter the qualification rounds for World Cup events at least in Japan, I somehow doubt that he’ll stop here.