Four Hills Tournament

The Four Hills Tournament (German: Vierschanzentournee) or the German-Austrian Ski Jumping Week (German: Deutsch-Österreichische Skisprung-Woche) is a ski jumping event composed of four World Cup events and has taken place in Germany and Austria each year since 1953. With few exceptions, it has consisted of the ski jumping events held at Oberstdorf, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Innsbruck and Bischofshofen, in this order.

The Four Hills Tournament champion is the one who gets the most points over the four events. Unlike the World Cup ranking, however, the actual points scored during the competitions are the ones that are used to determine the winner. In 2005–06, Janne Ahonen and Jakub Janda shared the overall victory after finishing with exactly the same points total after the four competitions. In 2001–02, the anniversary 50th edition, Sven Hannawald was the first to achieve the grand slam of ski jumping, winning all four events in the same edition. In 2017–18 season Kamil Stoch became the second ski jumper in history to obtain this achievement, and just a year later, in the 2018–19 edition, Ryōyū Kobayashi became the third.

The four individual events themselves are part of the World Cup and award points toward the world cup in exactly the same manner as all other world cup events.

From 2026-27 season, for the first time of the history, there is going to be women's edition of the tournament.^[1]

Traditionally, the order of the tournament competitions has been: Oberstdorf, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Innsbruck, Bischofshofen – with the following exceptions:

• 1953: Garmisch-Partenkirchen was the first, and Oberstdorf the second event.
• 1956–57, 1961–62, 1962–63: Innsbruck was the second event, and Garmisch-Partenkirchen third.
• 1971–72: Innsbruck was first, and Oberstdorf third.
• 2007–08, 2021–22: The Innsbruck event was cancelled due to bad weather, and replaced with an additional competition at Bischofshofen.

One of the tournament's peculiarities is its qualifying system. Unlike other ski jumping events where the best 30 competitors in the first round qualify for the second round, all Four Hills events follow a knock-out system first introduced for the 1996–97 season.^[3]

The 50 competitors are divided into 25 pairs. All 25 winners of these duels plus the five best lucky losers qualify for the second round.^[3] It is theoretically possible that a competitor who finishes the first round 12th will not qualify for the second round (if he loses his internal duel, five lucky losers and winners of their duels have better results) while the one with the 49th first series result may still qualify (if his "rival" has the worst result). On the other hand, jumpers are less likely to be disadvantaged by a possible significant change in weather conditions between the start and end of the first series. A change in the direction and speed of the wind can make it impossible for the best jumpers to produce a good result. In the event of significantly worse conditions during the second half of the first series, the possibility exists that most of the best jumpers would be eliminated by bad luck alone. Directly pairing rivals reduces the impact of these conditions. In this competition format the qualifying series are valued as well, since jumpers with a better qualification result will have the opportunity to compete against jumpers with worse result. Therefore, it is not enough for a jumper to be among 50 best jumpers in qualifications (with whatever result), but it is better for him to achieve a result as good as possible.

The first jumper in the competition is the one who qualified 26th, followed by his pair who qualified 25th. The next pair has 27th and 24th from the qualification, one after that 28th and 23rd etc. The last pair has last qualified jumper against qualification winner.^[4]

If qualification is postponed until the day of competition, the knock-out system is not used, and competition follows regular world cup rules. Because of that in the 2007/08 tournament, the knock-out system was used only in Oberstdorf.

Notes

Below is an overview of how many of the tournaments' four events were won by the overall winner in each season:

• Note: In the 2005–06 tournament, two competitors ended up as overall winners, so even though there have been 74 tournaments so far, the total in this overview shows 75.

• Note: In the 2005–06 tournament, two competitors ended up as overall winners, so even though there have been 74 tournaments so far, the total in this overview shows 75.

In 1965, Polish jumper Stanisław Marusarz (silver medalist at the 1938 World Championship) who was just visiting the tournament, asked the jury in Garmisch-Partenkirchen to allow him to perform a showcase jump. After a long debate, the jury agreed. Marusarz, who, at the time, was 53 years old (and had last competed nine years prior) completed a jump with a distance of 66 meters, using borrowed skies and boots, and wearing a business attire in which he had attended a New Year's party the night before.^[5]

Jens Weißflog was the first ski jumper to reach four wins, winning the tournament in 1983–84, 1984–85, 1990–91, and 1995–96.

The only instance when two competitors were proclaimed overall winners was at the 2005–06 tournament, when both Janne Ahone and Jakub Janda were crowned champions.

In 2000–01, Adam Małysz beat second-placed Janne Ahonen by 104.4 points, which is the biggest winning margin in tournament's history.

The following year, Sven Hannawald became the first person to win all four competitions in a single season. In 2017–18, Kamil Stoch repeated Hannawald's feat, and the following year, Ryōyū Kobayashi became the third person to win all four events in the same season.

As seen in some other competitions as well, the Four Hills Tournament allows many domestic ski jumpers, most of whom are young, participate in the qualifying round of their local competition (in Austria or Germany), thereby giving them an opportunity to gain experience at the highest level.

• Nordic Tournament
• Raw Air
• Planica7

• Four Hills Tournament web site

Media related to Four Hills Tournament at Wikimedia Commons