Ski Jumping
The Ryōyū effect
Japanese hip hop, high fashion and ski jumping. What's the connection? Ryōyū Kobayashi, the ski jumper who flew further than anyone had before him.
All eyes are on Ryōyū Kobayashi as he prepares to launch off the bath ledge. The Japanese ski-jumping sensation is standing against a vivid, hand-painted drawing of Mount Fuji on the wall of Tamano-yu, a 70-year-old sento (public bathhouse) in western Tokyo. Kobayashi says he enjoys the occasional trip to these traditional establishments to refresh and relax, though today’s visit feels less of an indulgence with a dozen bystanders standing watching him being photographed.
“I’ve gotten used to it,” Kobayashi says of the attention. Which is just as well, because he’s become impossible to ignore. As well as being the official holder of the Japanese distance record and landing the official third-longest jump ever, the 28-year-old athlete is a two-time Ski Flying World Cup champion and took gold and silver at the 2022 Beijing Olympics (in the men’s normal hill and large hill events respectively). But it’s what happened in spring 2024 that dropped jaws around the world. In Akureyri, Iceland, in April last year Kobayashi ski-jumped 37.5m further than anyone had ever done before.
Ryōyū ready to jump at Tamano-yu
© Norman Konrad
This leap off a bath might not be the most perilous he’s ever attempted, then, but he jokes that there’s still an element of risk. Standing on a slippery surface in large Toga Virilis boots, with bubbling water behind him, Kobayashi catches himself from slipping before hopping down onto the tiled floor with a grin. Kobayashi is a laid-back guy. In the changing room at Tamano-yu, he makes small talk with the two stylists prepping him, and chats with everyone involved in today’s photo session. He keeps his sentences short, even when talking with those close to him, like the members of his club, Team Roy (Roy is what Kobayashi’s friends call him). He’s more likely to flash a smile than speak at length. “When I have nothing to do, I clean up around my house or hang out with friends,” he says. Clubs and wild nights out don’t interest him much; visits to local museums have become more commonplace during his days off.
8 min
World’s longest-ever ski jump
Ryōyū Kobayashi and his team went to Iceland, intent on creating a jump big enough to smash world records.
Recently, he’s been enjoying the endless-summer fantasy paintings of Japanese artist Hiroshi Nagai and the polka-dot-centric work of Yayoi Kusama. Despite this easy-breezy approach, he shows no sign of hesitation at Tamano-yu, whether on the potential drawbacks of jumping off a half-century-old bath or when modelling clothes. He just goes for it. Kobayashi leaps from the ledge around 15 times, jogging over to the photographer to check the results. “My face looks so funny here!” he laughs at one shot. Shooting wrapped, he talks with the owner of the public bath, snaps some photos with him, and signs a white autograph board in the lobby. Throughout, he seems comfortable being the focus of attention. “When I first met Ryōyū, about 10 years ago, he was nothing like this,” remarks Tomohiro Maruyama, CEO of Team Roy. “He was reserved and often nervous. He’s completely changed in the last decade.”
Ryōyū wants to change the sport one way or another
A decade ago, he was 18 and already an adept ski jumper. When Kobayashi was three, his father built a practice hill in their backyard in Hachimantai, a city in the northeast of Japan’s main island, Honshu. “It was just a metre tall,” Kobayashi recalls. “They needed to move the snow to get the cars out. That’s how it kind of started.”
What it kind of started was a ski-jumping family. Kobayashi’s older brother and sister, Junshirō and Yūka, and his younger brother Tatsunao all became ski jumpers. “I did a lot of other sports, but they organised camps for ski jumping, so I knew it would get me out of school,” says Kobayashi. “Also, it’d get me out of my hometown.” It was at one of these camps, in 2014, that he encountered Japanese ski-jumping legend Noriaki Kasai, the only athlete to ever compete in eight Winter Olympics. That year, aged 42, Kasai became the oldest-ever ski-jumping Olympic medallist and the oldest winner of a World Cup event. In 2015, he asked Kobayashi to join his team, Tsuchiya Home Ski Club.
The team’s then coach, Janne Väätäinen, recalls his first impression of the rookie Kobayashi. “He was a good junior ski jumper, but there are many in Japan,” says the Finnish former Olympian. “With Ryōyū, there was something different: how smoothly he moved when jumping, or his in-run position [a skier’s pose as they travel before taking off]… I cannot explain it. But I thought, ‘This is something special.’”
When Kobayashi is in charge of the tunes, expect Japanese hip-hop bangers
© Norman Konrad
At Kobayashi’s 2016 World Cup debut in Poland, he came seventh, “which is amazing,” says Väätäinen. “Good things happened that season, but the next one was really bad.” That following season, he scored zero World Cup points. It was a turning point for Kobayashi, says the coach: “He put in more effort, trained constantly. He got better.” In the 2018/19 season, the young athlete won every possible ski-jump title, including the overall World Cup and the Four Hills Grand Slam, making him only the third person ever to achieve the latter. “He was bringing ski jumping to a new level,” says Väätäinen.
That season, the Finn departed Tsuchiya Home Ski Club to become head coach of his national team. Then, in 2023, he received a call from Kobayashi: “He was leaving Tsuchiya Home to go fully pro.” Väätäinen left his national coaching role to join Kobayashi in the newly formed Team Roy.
So what does it mean to become ‘fully pro’? “I’d say Ryōyū has been professional since he came to Tsuchiya Home in 2015,” says Väätäinen, “but the Japanese are probably not calling it that. To be pro is to become independent. You’re responsible for your living, prize money, sponsors, everything. No one is in the background to save you.
“I was away for four years, but the success Ryōyū had in that time gave him the confidence to be what he is today. He’s business-minded, for sure. He knows what he wants. He wants to change ski jumping one way or another.”
Kobayashi fiddles with his smartphone in the back seat of his Range Rover as it heads towards Tokyo’s bustling Shinjuku district. He’s not blocking out the outside world, though; instead, he’s excitedly swiping through Spotify to share his favourite Japanese rap tracks.
Hip hop started from a place with less attention. I’d like to create a similar vibe in ski jumping
The ski jumper can seem reserved in more intimate settings, and he answers questions broadly. What’s your friend circle like? “They’re all interesting.” What are some of your favourite Tokyo memories? “Honestly, every day is fun.” One topic that gets him going, however, is Japanese hip hop. He eagerly runs through a list of artists he loves – AK-69, Bad Hop, JP The Wavy (“He’s so cool”) – then takes out his phone to play a mini DJ set. He bops along to the beats, reciting lines like he’s been passed the mic. “Hip hop made me feel I could be myself,” he explains. “It was OK to be honest. Like I could live in my own style.”
Kobayashi became interested in rap after graduating from high school. His gateway, he says, was Tokyo’s Yuki Chiba, aka KOHH, one of the biggest names in Japanese hip hop in the 2010s (Chiba also featured on Megan Thee Stallion’s latest album). Kobayashi recites bars from his 2015 track Hikouki and the viral hit It G Ma, where KOHH guested with South Korean rapper Keith Ape (he lets out an energetic “underwater squad!” when the topic comes up). “I’ve only been to one of his live shows, on a rooftop in Ginza,” he says. “It was incredible.”
Kobayashi has become tight with many of the Japanese rappers he’s sharing over the car’s sound system: “Sometimes we eat together – AK-69 took me out for sushi three days ago.” While not big on clubs, he enjoys going to festivals organised by his musician friends. “I’ve never made my own music or tried DJing,” he admits. “I’d be interested, though. Hip hop is all about expressing yourself, right? I wonder what it would be like if I did that.” He’s also considering how it could be mixed with his sport: “I want to create a space where [ski] jumping and music coexist. Hip hop started from a place with less attention, so I’d like to create a similar vibe in jumping.”
Hip hop, specifically the homegrown kind, has influenced every part of Kobayashi’s life. Maruyama remembers that before the ski jumper got into the genre he was less confident and “dressed plainly”. The music and its culture inspired a new-found swagger; Kobayashi says his fashion style is completely shaped by it: “The way rappers like KOHH would talk about brands in their songs got me interested.”
Recently, he has made in-roads into the fashion world and become friends with Hiroshi Fujiwara, the Japanese designer often cited as the ‘godfather of streetwear’, who collaborated on Nike’s HTM line (the H stands for Hiroshi), a project that reinvented and revitalised classic shoe designs. Also a musician and producer, Fujiwara was – coincidentally – one of the first DJs in Japan to play American hip hop, back in the ’80s. “He’s someone I respect,” says Kobayashi.
It was in September 2023, when the pair were attending an F1 Grand Prix together, that Kobayashi asked Fujiwara if he would design his ski-jump helmet. “He gave a few options,” the athlete recalls. “I chose some. There were just a few rounds of feedback.” He wore the helmet during his record-breaking ski jump in Iceland.
Kobayashi himself has designed clothing items available in the Team Roy store, although he has no interest right now in creating a clothing brand. “What I like about fashion is how you can express your mood,” he says. “It’s about feeling good.” Another of his passions away from the ski ramp is playing golf. Outside of hip hop, Kobayashi says, this is where he’s found many of his latest friends. “What’s my lifestyle like now?” he says, turning the question around from the backseat of the Range Rover before quoting JP The Wavy with a smile: “Wavy. I’m wavy.”
What I like about fashion is how you can express your mood. It’s about feeling good
Kobayashi’s career has also brought him into contact with professionals who might seem, at least initially, less attuned to his wavy way of life. “I’m just a farmer from the mountains,” says Bernie Rupitsch. This is somewhat understating the 51-year-old Austrian’s credentials – Rupitsch is a fixer of sorts, someone who can take wild ideas and make them real.
In 2021, Red Bull approached him with one such project. “They asked me to build a bigger ski-jump hill,” he recalls. The person they wanted the hill built for? Ryōyū Kobayashi. In 2019, Kobayashi achieved a jump of 252m – a personal best, the Japanese record, and the third longest in history (the current official record, by Austrian Stefan Kraft, stands at 253.5m). But the location of his jump, Planica in Slovenia, has a hill size of 240m. Hill size (HS) isn’t the height of the hill itself but the distance between the take-off table and the end of the landing zone, after which the slope rapidly plateaus. In other words, things get seriously risky when a skier soars past that point. At Planica, Kobayashi crossed the HS by 12 metres. He was already jumping further than the hill was built for, and there aren’t any others in the world with an HS greater than 240m. Rupitsch intended to build a hill more than double that size.
The ski-jumping ace skips through the streets of Hobo Shinjuku Norengai
© Norman Konrad
Fortunately, he had experience: in 2012, Rupitsch had attempted this plan with ski jumper and fellow countryman Thomas Morgenstern. Construction of the hill on Austria’s highest mountain, the Großglockner, was completed but then shut down by red tape from the sport’s governing body. For a decade, Rupitsch couldn’t let go of the idea. “I’d travel the world and think, ‘That could be a nice ski-jumping hill,’” he says.
This time, Rupitsch wanted to ensure nothing could scupper his plans. First, he wanted somewhere remote – not only to avoid interference but for practical reasons, too. “In Austria, the valley started 1,300m up,” he says. “It’s better to fly closer to sea level.” The higher you go, the thinner the air, delivering less lift. But this raised another issue. “In Europe, there are many trees at sea level,” Rupitsch explains. “For me, the rule was: don’t cut the trees.” After two years of searching, he found his hill near the town of Akyureyri in northern Iceland. The Austrian remembers the Northern Lights filling the sky as he finally walked on it: “That was a sign.”
In summer 2023, Kobayashi came to see the hill for himself. “It was just rocks,” he recalls, “but I thought, ‘Yeah, this is made for ski jumping.’” Did he see parallels with the hill his father had built for him as a child? Kobayashi ponders the question. “I guess it’s for me but also for the ski-jumping community, to bring more awareness of the sport,” he says.
Kobayashi loves fashion and designed some items in the Team Roy store
© Norman Konrad
The ski jumper had just one request. “Ryōyū needed the in-run to be ice,” says Rupitsch of the launch runway, usually made from ceramic. “There’s a hose running beneath that sprays it with water, which freezes. I like ice because we have no construction.” But this also meant that once the hill was built, the jump would have to happen before it got too warm. Rupitsch set a cut-off of the end of April.
Huge, heavy snow groomers were shipped from Germany to move more than 120,000 cubic metres of snow. The start gate, which Kobayashi would launch off from a seated position, had to be custom-milled and rigged to a snow groomer so it could be moved on the day if he needed extra height – and therefore speed – on the in-run. In the final weeks, the groomers were working 24-hour shifts and breaking down constantly. Then, as the April window began to close, a blizzard hit Akyureyri. It briefly brought more snow, but that meant waiting out the weather and regrooming the slope. The spring thaw was rapidly approaching.
“I went to a coffee shop in the mall and ordered 20kg of pretzel salt,” says Rupitsch. “In Austria, if you want to freeze something you put salt on it – it gets really icy before it melts. If it got too warm, I was going to put the salt on the in-run. If not, we’d have a pretzel party.”
Kobayashi's epic jump
© Rachael Stott
The day before the jump, Kobayashi surveyed the site. “All he said was, ‘Thanks for doing this,’” Rupitsch recalls, laughing. “I was quite happy with that.”
“I felt relaxed because of how perfect it was,” Kobayashi explains.
To those unacquainted with the man, Kobayashi’s economical conversation when discussing his sport could be mistaken for a lack of enthusiasm. But to people who know him it’s anything but. “Without passion, you don’t risk your life like this,” says Väätäinen, “because it’s fucking dangerous.” In Akyureyri on April 24, 2024, Kobayashi demonstrated that passion without uttering a word.
Kobayashi’s ski-jumping helmet, designed by his friend Hiroshi Fujiwara
© Norman Konrad
It’s the second day of jumping, and although this town – population: less than 20,000 – is remote, word has spread. An unidentified drone has been spotted in the sky, and an Icelandic news site has already posted spy shots. Yesterday, Kobayashi made three jumps before the snow got too slushy – the last of these, at 256m, edged past the official world record. Today, he’s been here since 6am, pushing the upper limit further – first to 259m, then to a staggering 282m.
Kobayashi at the restaurant Unagushi Yakitori Ufuku Yoyogi Ten in Shinjuku
© Norman Konrad
Väätäinen says Kobayashi has actually been up since 4am, practising in the parking lot beforehand. “He’s so calm that you don’t really know what’s inside his head,” he admits. “I’m sure I’ve been more scared than he has these couple of days.” Väätäinen’s concerns are fuelled by an awareness that the ski-jump season ended five weeks ago: “There aren’t many athletes who can come to a hill like this without jumping for more than a month.”
It’s now 7.18am, and Kobayashi is back at the top of the in-run for his fourth attempt of the morning. The start gate has been raised to within half a metre of its maximum height. Väätäinen doesn’t think increasing it any further will make much difference – Kobayashi’s speed has been clocked at more than 100kph on every attempt. He also believes the athlete found his form with that last jump. With the sun now fully up, the temperature is becoming a concern, and there’s talk on the radio of adding salt to the in-run. “No salt,” comes the reply. Seated on the start gate, Kobayashi waits for the wind to clear.
“Ryōyū is on the in-run,” comes the message. “3, 2, 1, take-off!” Kobayashi emerges over the crest of the hill, his straightened form craned forward like an arrow, skis in a perfect V. Eight seconds pass and still he’s flying, past the official world-record marker, nine seconds, 10… He lands smoothly. “Distance: 291 metres.” Kobayashi has flown almost 15-per-cent further than any jumper in history.
With the snow melting fast, this will be his final attempt. Soon, the hill will be completely gone; not that long ago, it didn’t even exist. Later that day, the FIS – ski jumping’s governing body – says the jump doesn’t meet the necessary criteria for official recognition. For Kobayashi, though, that was never the point – he got the world to pay attention to his sport.
“That,” he says in English, “is ski flying.”
Six months later, Kobayashi is posing in front of a large painting of a can of tuna on the side of a building at Tokyo’s Hobo Shinjuku Norengai. As evening falls, the restaurants and bars in this dining hub – converted from an old warehouse and traditional houses – rapidly fill with hungry patrons. Many do a double take at the man in an all-black Prada outfit perched atop a table.
“He’s a natural model,” Maruyama says as Kobayashi adjusts his position. “This is something he really wants to do.”
Kobayashi will happily talk about the immediate future with anyone who asks. Tomorrow he’ll be taking the Shinkansen, or bullet train, out to Kobe. In a week, he’s heading up to snowy Hokkaido to prep for the ski-jumping season. Beyond that, it’s a mystery. “I don’t really think about the future,” he says. “I’m not really sure what I’ll do next.”
For Ryōyū Kobayashi, there is no destination, just worlds to explore and impossible leaps to enjoy. “My life,” he says, “is going my own way.”