Japan missed its last chance for a place on the medals podium Sunday as its ski-jumping quartet settled for another fourth-place finish in the normal-hill team event at the Nordic Skiing World Championships.
Noriaki Kasai and Masahiko Harada nailed solid leaps of over 90 meters on the K-90 hill in Lahti, Finland, but the 886.5 points the team accumulated was not enough for a medal, adding to the disappointment Japan suffered in the large-hill event Saturday.
"It's a shame. I thought we would do well on the normal hill, but it looks like we'll have to start again at square one," said Harada, the 1993 normal-hill world champion and a member of Japan's gold medal-winning team at the 1998 Nagano Olympics.
Austria won its first team gold since 1991 with a total of 953.5 points. Finland took second with 951.5 with Germany third at 911.5.
The result means that Japan will now return home from the Nordic World Championships empty-handed for the first time since back in 1989.