Four Hills Tournament

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The Four Hills Tournament (Vierschanzentournee) is composed of four Ski Jumping World Cup events and has taken place in Germany and Austria each year since 1952. The tournament is third only to the World Cup and the Winter Olympics as the most sought after title on the ski jumping world circuit.

The Four Hills Tournament comprises four individual World Cup events and points gained in the Four Hills Tournament are added to points gained in other World Cup events throughout the season.

1 Tournament Hills
2 Knock-out system
3 Previous Winners
4 Records
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Tournament Hills

Date	Place	Hill Name	K-Point	Hill Size	Hill Record
December 30	Oberstdorf, Germany	Schattenbergschanze	K-120	HS 137	143.5 m (2003) Sigurd Pettersen, Norway
January 1	Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany	Große Olympiaschanze	K-115	HS 125	129.5 m (2001) Adam Małysz, Poland
January 4	Innsbruck, Austria	Bergiselschanze	K-120	HS 130	134.5 m (2002) Sven Hannawald, Germany
January 6	Bischofshofen, Austria	Paul-Ausserleitner-Schanze	K-125	HS 140	143 m (2005) Daiki Ito, Japan

[edit] Knock-out system

One of the tournament's "specialities" is its controversial qualifying system. Unlike at the other ski jumping events where the best 30 competitors of the first series qualify into the second series, all four tournament's events follow the so called knock-out system, first introduced in the 1996/97 season. 50 first series competitors are divided into 25 pairs. All 25 winners of those internal "duels" plus five best "lucky losers" qualify into the second series. This way, it is theoretically possible that a competitor with the 12^th first series result does not qualify into the second series (if he loses his internal duel, five lucky losers and winners of their duels have better results) while the one with the 49^th first series result may still qualify (if his "rival" has the worst result).

[edit] Previous Winners

List of combined Four Hills Tournament Winners

[edit] Records

Jens Weissflog (DDR/D) was the first ski jumper to have won the tournament four times. He won the tournament in 1984, 1985, 1991 and 1996. Janne Ahonen (Finland) equalled his success in 2006 with his own fourth win (1998/99, 2002/03, 2004/05 and 2005/06). The next in number of wins are Helmut Recknagel (DDR) and Bjørn Wirkola (Nor) with three titles each. Wirkolas victories was in three consecutive years (1967-69), a record still uncontested.

The fourth victory of Janne Ahonen in 2005/06 was also the first time the tournament victory was tied between two competitors, with Jakub Janda sharing the title by obtaining his first 4 Hills Tournament success.

Jens Weissflog and Bjørn Wirkola have both won ten individual competitions within the Four Hills Tournament. Matti Nykänen (FIN) and Janne Ahonen are next with 7 victories.

During the 50th edition of the tournament (2001/2002), Sven Hannawald was the first person to win all four competitions in a single year.

Germany has the most winners with 16 (11 of which were pre-1989), next comes Finland with 15 victories and then Norway with 10 wins and Austria with 9. Czechoslovakia and its successor Czech Republic have two wins altogether; the following countries all have a single victory: Japan, Slovenia, Poland and the USSR.