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Kazuyoshi Funaki

Kazuyoshi Funaki
船木 和喜
Country  Japan
Full name 船木 和喜
Born (1975-04-27) 27 April 1975 (age 41)
Yoichi, Hokkaido, Japan
Height 1.75 m (5 ft 9 in)
Ski club Fit Ski
Personal best 206.5 m (677 ft)
Planica, 19 March 1999
World Cup career
Seasons 1993
19952005
20092012
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)
Updated on 10 February 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.

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.


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