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From the Olympics Toword Tomorrow
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Satoya ensures Japan best winter Olympics ever
The result also assured Japan of its most successful winter games ever.
Satoya's gold medal also helped the Japanese forget the disappointment of only an hours earlier, when Masahiko Harada, poised to win the normal hill ski jumping gold medal, was blown out of the air by the fickle winds swirling about the Hakuba ski resort.
Satoya, a lightly regarded freestyle skier out of Sapporo, surprised the world with an early run down the sun-bathed moguls course in Nagano that none of the sport's leaders could eclipse.
Judges awarded Satoya 25.06 points for an exciting run that a clean single twister-side split and a soaring kosak for the two required jumps.
Satoya's victory gave the host country its second gold medal and third medal overall of the 18th Winter Games and also marked the first time that Japan has won more than one gold medal in a single winter Olympics.
Japan's best performance in the winter Olympics to date was at the Albertville Games in 1992 when the country's athletes, led by the Nordic combined team and figure skater Midori Ito, won seven medals -- a gold, two silver and four bronze.
One of Japan's most memorable Olympic moments has always been the sweep of the medals in the normal hill ski jumping event at the 1972 Sapporo Games and on Wednesday, some 40,000 Japanese ski jumping fans came to Hakuba hoping for a repeat of history.
Their hopes were fueled when reigning world champion Masahiko Harada nailed the longest of the day -- 91.5 meters -- for the first round lead, with four other members of the Japanese jumping juggernaut all within striking distance of the medals.
Four Hills champion and World Cup leader Kazuyoshi Funaki of Japan stoked the fires more with a solid jump of 89 meters and nearly perfect style marks to move to the top.
Finland's Jani Soininen ensured there would be no Japanese sweep this day by catching a good wind to take the lead.
Harada was the only jumper left to beat the Finn, but the winds swirled around behind the local favorite, grounding him prematurely at 84 meters and dropping into fifth place overall.
That left Funaki as the only Japanese jumping medal winner of the day with a silver.
At the Aqua Wing ice arena, Japan, which had hoped to collect a win against China in the women's ice hockey tournament, were dismantled by Guo Wei's three goals in a 6-1 thrashing.
Japan's lone goal of the game and second of the tournament came on a power play in the third period when Masako Sato picked up a big rebound and went to her left, beating China's goaltender Guo Hong with a backhander.
At the M-Wave indoor oval, Japanese speed skating champion Mie Uehara clocked 4:17.92 for 14th place in the women's 3,000 meters while her compatriots Chiharu Nozaki and Noriko Munekata were 17th and 18th, respectively.
In Nozawa Onsen, Kyoji Suga crossed the line in 59:15.6 with two missed targets to finish in 14th place -- Japan's highest Olympic biathlon finish for a male competitor ever and one rank in front of 1994 Olympic gold medalist and 1996 world champion Serguei Tarasov of Russia.
At the Spiral luge track in Iizuna Kogen, Japan's top luger Eriko Yamada had two good runs, but still had to settle for a disappointing 21st place, while Yumie Kobayashi, the daughter of former Olympic luge place-winners, ended in 25th -- nearly seven seconds off the pace.
In curling, the Japanese women split their two matches with Norway and Sweden to stand at 2-3 while the Japanese men fell to Norway to stand at 1-3 in the eight-team round-robin tourney. (Kyodo News)
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Copyright 1998 The Shinano Mainichi Shimbun