Masahiko Harada
Masahiko Harada (Japanese原田 雅 彦, Masahiko Harada; born May 9, 1968 in Kamikawa, Hokkaidō ) is a former Japanese ski jumper and today's ski jumping coach. It was because of his serene mind in the 1990s not only one of Japan's most popular athletes of his discipline.
- 2.1 World Cup wins
- 2.2 World Cup rankings
- 2.3 Grand Prix wins (Summer)
Career
Harada began at the age of nine with the ski jumping. He had in 1987 in his first World Cup Sapporo domestic use. In the Nordic World Ski Championships 1993 in Falun, Sweden, he was surprisingly world champion on the normal hill. Harada was a pretty fickle Springer, which often was only one good jump in competition, and he was for many years rather is used in sporting midfield. His first World Cup victory was on 8 December 1995 in Villach. Overall, he won four World Cup in the 1995/96 season and was fifth overall. The next World Cup season was disappointing for him, his best result was a third place. At the World Championships in Trondheim, however, he was surprisingly world champion on the large hill.
Harada won the overall ranking of the Summer Grand Prix in 1997 and 1998 for themselves. The next World Cup season 1997/98 was for him the most successful of his career: he won five individual event and finished fourth overall. At the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano home he won the bronze medal in the large hill. With his second jump he reached the Tagesbestweite of 136 meters and landed beyond the range of the video width measurement. Subsequent follow-up measurements showed that Harada had even reached 137.5 meters, and the silver medal as he would have been entitled.
In the following years he rarely achieved podium finishes. Repeatedly, he announced his retirement, but then returned back again. His most last World Cup competition he played on December 15, 2002 in Titisee -Neustadt, then he jumped on the Continental Cup, the " second division " of the ski jumper. Even with extraordinary individual competition in Japan, he is often seen as before.
Surprisingly Harada was at the Olympic Winter Games 2006 in Turin at the start. He was also qualified for the competition on the normal hill, but was disqualified because of too long ski.
Harada was in the 1990s in almost all major competitions a member of the Japanese team. In 1994 he was at the Olympic Winter Games in Lillehammer to a tragic figure: before his jump led the Japanese team far ahead of the German. Harada would have had to reach a conclusion Springer has a width of only 105 meters to help Japan to gold, but on a completely botched jump he landed with only 97.5 m, so that Japan remained only the silver medal. At the Olympic Winter Games 1998, however, he whetted this saddle again: Takanobu Okabe with, Kazuyoshi Funaki and Hiroya Saitō he won gold and thus became a Japanese folk hero. At World Championships Harada won with the Japanese team in 1997 and 1999 Trondheim in Ramsau silver.
After the 2005/ 06 season, he finished his career final.
Coaching career
In 2006, when Coach Hiroya Saitō head coach Keisuke Tomii replaced, Harada won the vacant post of the coach of the team of Yukijirushi Nyūgyō.
Achievements
World Cup wins
World Cup rankings
Grand Prix wins (Summer)
Private life
Masahiko Harada has been married since 1994 and has two children. He lives in Sapporo.