is a Japanese ski jumper.
As a ski jumper, he has won 37 World Cup individual competitions, the World Cup overall title twice, Four Hills Tournament three times, and is an individual Olympics gold medalist.
During his victorious 2018âÂÂ19 World Cup season, Kobayashi scored 13 individual wins and won all six possible titles in a single season: the World Cup overall title, the Ski Flying World Cup overall, the Four Hills Tournament, the Raw Air tournament, the Planica7 tournament, and Willingen Five tournament.
He is the third ski jumper in history to win the 'Grand Slam' of all four events in the 4Hills Tournament, the gold medal at the 2022 Olympics in Beijing on the normal hill and the silver on the large hill.
With 252 metres (827 feet), the third longest jump in history, he is the current Japanese record holder. In an unofficial event near Akureyri, Iceland in April 2024, he achieved a distance of 291m after being airborne for around 10 seconds. It was an unofficial world record and is not being counted as a ski flying world record by FIS.
He was born on 8 November 1996 in Hachimantai, Iwate Prefecture, Japan. He began skiing at the age of five but began ski jumping in the first grade, inspired by his older brother and Japanese ski jumper Junshiro Kobayashi. He made his first ski jumping steps usually practiced at Tayama Ski Jumping Hill in Hachimantai and Hanawa Jumping Hill in Kazuno, Akita. In 2015, he joined Japanese ski jumping team Tsuchiya Home Ski Team. Shortly after the end of the 2022/2023 season, he announced that he left the team after 8 years and that he created his own club, "Team Roy".
He has two older siblings, Junshirà  and Yà «ka, and a younger brother, Tatsunao; all of them are also ski jumpers. He attended Morioka Central High School, graduating in 2015.
On his own YouTube channel, he shares vlogs from competitions, private life, free time and training.
At the 2018 Winter Olympics, Kobayashi competed in the men's normal hill, placing 7th, as well as the men's large hill, placing 10th. He also competed in the team event with teammates Taku Takeuchi, Noriaki Kasai, and Daiki Ito, finishing in 6th place.
Kobayashi won his first Olympic gold medal at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing in the men's normal hill event. He became the third Japanese athlete to win a gold medal in the individual ski jumping events at the Olympics, after Kazuyoshi Funaki in the individual large hill event in 1998, and Yukio Kasaya in the individual normal hill event in 1972. He also succeeded in the other event, the men's large hill, placing 2nd.