Lars Bystøl

Lars Bystøl
File:Lars Bystøl.jpg Bystøl in Oslo, 2008
Country	Norway
Full name	Lars Kristian Bystøl
Born	(1978-12-04) 4 December 1978 Voss, Norway
Height
Personal best	216.5 m (710 ft) Planica, 20 Mar 2005
World Cup career
Seasons	2002–2008
Individual wins	1
Indiv. podiums	4
Team podiums	2
Medal record Men's ski jumping Olympic Games 2006 Turin Individual NH 2006 Turin Individual LH 2006 Turin Team LH FIS Nordic World Ski Championships 2003 Val di Fiemme Team LH 2005 Oberstdorf Team LH Men's ski flying FIS Ski Flying World Championships 2006 Bad Mitterndorf Team
Updated on 30 Mar 2015.

Lars Kristian Bystøl (born 4 December 1978) is a Norwegian former ski jumper who won an Olympic gold medal, a World Cup event, two World Championship bronze medals in team large hill events (2003, 2005), and a gold medal in the Ski Flying World Championships. Outside of ski jumping, Bystøl has also had several alcohol-related episodes that have made the front pages of Norwegian newspapers.

Career

Bystøl won his first and only World Cup event on 4 January 2006, by winning the third event of the 2005–06 Four Hills Tournament in Innsbruck. Eleven days later, Bystøl won a gold medal in the team event at the 2006 Ski Flying World Championships in Bad Mitterndorf.

He continued the World Cup season by placing between 10th and 20th in the next three individual events, before going to the 2006 Winter Olympics. He retained his top 15 position in the World Cup standings, which enabled him to qualify for the normal hill of the Olympics despite being disqualified in the qualifying run. Once there, he finished sixth in the first jump, but held on with a 103.5 metre second jump to win Olympic gold.

Bystøl finished 13th overall in the 2005–06 World Cup standings.

World Cup

Standings

Season	Overall	4H	NT
2001–02	65	–	46
2002–03	26	22	54
2003–04	21	10	22
2004–05	10	18	4
2005–06	13	16	13
2006–07	76	58	63
2007–08	37	–	18

Wins

No.	Season	Date	Place	Hill	Size
1	2005–06	4 Jan 2006	Innsbruck	Bergiselschanze HS 130	LH

Substance abuse

In 2000, he was sent home from a Continental Cup competition in Innsbruck after a party on New Year's Eve. Later that year he was caught DUI with a 2.38‰ blood alcohol content. He was sentenced to 24 days in prison. In 2003, after some heavy drinking, he fell into the ocean during a fight. Bystøl's alcoholism became so bad that it caused him to be kicked off the national ski jumping team in 2004, though he later managed to reclaim his spot on the team.

In early 2009, he admitted to having tested positive for tetrahydrocannabinol, a derivative of cannabis. The sample was delivered in November 2008 in a Norwegian Cup race in Vikersund.

References

• Lars Bystoel at the International Ski Federation