Masahiko Harada

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Medal record
Men's ski jumping
Olympic Games
Gold 1998 Nagano Team large hill
Silver 1994 Lillehammer Team large hill
Bronze 1998 Nagano Individual large hill
World Championships
Gold 1993 Falun Individual normal hill
Gold 1997 Trondheim Individual large hill
Silver 1997 Trondheim Individual normal hill
Silver 1997 Trondheim Team large hill
Silver 1999 Ramsau Team large hill
Bronze 1999 Ramsau Individual normal hill

Masahiko "Happy" Harada (原田 雅彦 Harada Masahiko?, born May 9, 1968 in Kamikawa, Hokkaido) is a Japanese ski jumper. He is best remembered for a meltdown at the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, then his subsequent redemption at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano.

At the 1994 games, the Japanese team had a nearly insurmountable lead heading into the last jump of the large hill. Harada, the team's anchor, had jumped 122 meters in his previous attempt and needed only 105 meters in his final jump to clinch gold for Japan. His jump was just shy of 98 meters and dropped Japan to second, with the gold going to the German team.

Four years later Harada would again have his chance to deliver team gold, this time in his home country. His first jump of 79.5 meters knocked his team from first to fourth and brought back memories of Lillehammer. Then, on his second attempt he delivered an Olympic-record tying 137 meter jump. His teammmate Kazuyoshi Funaki would then close out the event with a 125 meter jump, clinching the first Olympic ski jumping gold medal for Japan since the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo.

Along with the team gold, Harada also captured bronze in Nagano in the individual large hill after a 136 meter final jump that pushed up him from sixth to third.

Harada has competed in five Olympics. In addition to the Lillehammer and Nagano games, he competed in Albertville in 1992, Salt Lake City in 2002 and Turin in 2006.

He is a two-time FIS Nordic World Ski Championships winner (1993: individual normal hill, 1997: individual large hill), and also won three silvers (1997: Individual normal hill, 1997, 1999: Team large hill) and one bronze (1999: Individual normal hill) as well.

On July 12, 2006, Harada was appointed Ambassador to the 2007 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships in Sapporo, Japan by the organizing committee. The 2007 Championships ran February 22-March 4, 2007.

Advanced Search
Included Web Search Engines


Safe Search

close

Top Matching Results

Occasionally Search.com will highlight specialized results that are based on the context of your query. Examples of specialized results include specific links to news, images, or video.

Top Matching Results may highlight information from other Search.com pages, content from the CNET Network of sites, or third party content. The listings are based purely on relevance. Search.com does not receive payment for listings in this section but our partners that provide this data may get paid for listing these products.

Sponsored Links

This section contains paid listings which have been purchased by companies that want to have their sites appear for specific search terms and related content. These listings are administered, sorted and maintained by a third party and are not endorsed by Search.com.

Search Results

Search.com sends your search query to several search engines at one time and integrates the results into one list which has been sorted by relevance using Search.com's proprietary algorithm. You can customize the list of search engines included in your metasearch from the preferences.

The search engines that are used in your metasearch may allow companies to pay to have their Web sites included within the results. To view the Paid Inclusion policy for a specific search engine, please visit their Web site. Search.com does not accept payment or share revenue with any search engine partner for listings in this section.