Kazuyoshi Funaki

Kazuyoshi Funaki 船木 和喜
Country	Japan
Full name	船木 和喜
Born	(1975-04-27) 27 April 1975 Yoichi, Hokkaido, Japan
Height
Ski club	Fit Ski
Personal best	206.5 m (677 ft) Planica, 19 Mar 1999
World Cup career
Seasons	1993 1995–2005 2009–2012
Individual wins	15
Team wins	2
Indiv. podiums	38
Team podiums	7
Yellow bibs	7
Indiv. starts	238
Team starts	17
Four Hills titles	1 (1998)
Nordic titles	1 (1997)
Medal record Men's ski jumping Olympic Games 1998 Nagano Individual LH 1998 Nagano Team LH 1998 Nagano Individual NH FIS Nordic World Ski Championships 1999 Ramsau Individual NH 1997 Trondheim Team LH 1999 Ramsau Team LH 2003 Val di Fiemme Team LH Men's ski flying FIS Ski Flying World Championships 1998 Oberstdorf Individual
Updated on 10 Jan 2016.

Kazuyoshi Funaki (船木 和喜, Funaki Kazuyoshi) (born 27 April 1975) is a Japanese ski jumper. He ranked among the most successful sportsmen of its discipline, particularly in the 1990s. Funaki is known for his special variant of the V-style, in which the body lies flatter between the skis than usual.

Career

Funaki began ski jumping at the age of eleven. His birthplace Yoichi is also the home of Yukio Kasaya, who was a Japanese national hero with his Normal Hill victory in the 1972 Winter Olympics at Sapporo. Kasaya was also Funaki's role model.

Funaki had his first World Cup appearance on December 20, 1992 in Sapporo. His first World Cup victory was achieved on December 10, 1994 in the normal hill at Planica, Slovenia. Several weeks later, he was leading the Four Hills Tournament in total tour points after the third event. In the second part of the last event at Bischofshofen, he had the longest jump of 131.5 meters, but fell during the landing - and the overall tour victory went to Austrian Andreas Goldberger, and Funaki finished second.

Altogether Funaki won 15 World Cup career victories, his last on February 5, 2005 at Sapporo. He achieved his best results in the 1997/98 season with a second rank in the World Cup rankings. In that season he also won the Four Hills Tournament.

In 1997, Funaki won the ski jumping event at the Holmenkollen ski festival. He also won the FIS Ski-Flying World Championships 1998 in Oberstdorf.

The high point of his career was in the 1998 Winter Olympic Games at Nagano. In front of his local crowd, Funaki won the individual gold medal on the individual large Hill, the team large hill gold medal, and the individual normal hill silver medal behind the Finn Jani Soininen. During those games, he became only the second person to ever achieve perfect marks from all five judges (20 points is the highest attainable mark), following Toni Innauer who had achieved this masterpiece already in 1976 and preceding Sven Hannawald (2003), Hideharu Miyahira (2003) and Wolfgang Loitzl (2009). In honor of these achievements, he represented Asia in carrying the Olympic Flag during the opening ceremonies of the next Winter Olympics, in Salt Lake City.

At the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships, he became the world champion of the individual normal hill in 1999 at Ramsau, Austria. And together with the Japanese team, he placed 2nd in the Team large hill in 1997, 1999 and 2003.

For his ski jumping successes, Funaki received the Holmenkollen medal in 1999.

In recent times, Funaki is only moderately successful despite some opportunities for successes. In the 2004/05 season, he finished 13th in the World Cup standing.

World Cup

Standings

Season	Overall	SF	JP	4H	NT
1992/93	–	–	N/A	–	N/A
1994/95	4	7	N/A		N/A
1995/96	33	19	39	28	N/A
1996/97			4	10
1997/98			4		8
1998/99	4	4		5
1999/00	14	9	13	13	14
2000/01	30	40	N/A	46	–
2001/02	11	N/A	N/A	25	9
2002/03	30	N/A	N/A	33	34
2003/04	40	N/A	N/A	44	39
2004/05	30	N/A	N/A	52	57
2008/09	63	–	N/A	–	–
2009/10	–	–	N/A	–	–
2010/11	58	–	N/A	–	N/A
2011/12	–	–	N/A	–	N/A

Wins

No.	Season	Date	Place	Hill	Size
1	1994/95	10 Dec 1994	Planica	Bloudkova srednja K-90	NH
2		4 Jan 1995	Innsbruck	Bergiselschanze K-110	LH
3	1996/97	14 Dec 1996	Harrachov	Čerťák K-120	LH
4		4 Jan 1997	Innsbruck	Bergiselschanze K-110	LH
5		12 Mar 1997	Kuopio	Puijo K-95 (night)	NH
6		14 Mar 1997	Oslo	Holmenkollbakken K-112	LH
7	1997/98	29 Dec 1997	Oberstdorf	Schattenbergschanze K-115	LH
8		1 Jan 1998	Ga-Pa	Große Olympiaschanze K-115	LH
9		4 Jan 1998	Innsbruck	Bergiselschanze K-110	LH
10		25 Jan 1998	Oberstdorf	Heini-Klopfer-Skiflugschanze K-185	FH
11		21 Mar 1998	Planica	Bloudkova velikanka K-120	LH
12	1998/99	10 Jan 1999	Engelberg	Gross-Titlis-Schanze K-120	LH
13		24 Jan 1999	Sapporo	Ōkurayama K-120	LH
14		6 Mar 1999	Lahti	Salpausselkä K-90 (night)	NH
15	2004/05	5 Feb 2005	Sapporo	Ōkurayama HS 134 (night)	LH

References

• Kazuyoshi Funaki at the International Ski Federation
• Holmenkollen medalists - click Holmenkollmedaljen for downloadable pdf file (Norwegian)
• Holmenkollen winners since 1892 - click Vinnere for downloadable pdf file (Norwegian)