Four Hills Tournament

The Four Hills Tournament () or the German-Austrian Ski Jumping Week () 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.

Tournament hills

{| class="wikitable sortable"

! Date

! Image

! Place

! Hill name

! K-Point

! Hill size

! Hill record

| rowspan="5" |

| 29 or 30 December

| 75px

| Oberstdorf, Germany

| Schattenbergschanze

| K-120

| HS 137

| 143.5 m (2003) Sigurd Pettersen

| 1 January

| 75px

| Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany

| Große Olympiaschanze

| K-125

| HS 142

| 145.0 m (2025) Michael Hayböck

| 3 or 4 January

| 75px

| Innsbruck, Austria

| Bergiselschanze

| K-120

| HS 128

| 138.0 m (2015) Michael Hayböck

| 6 January

| 75px

| Bischofshofen, Austria

| Paul-Ausserleitner-Schanze

| K-125

| HS 142

| 145.0 m (2019) Dawid Kubacki

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.

Knock-out system

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.

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.

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.

List of winners

thumb|upright|Four Hills Trophy (Photo)

thumb|upright|Four Hills Trophy (Sketch)

{| class="wikitable"

| style="background:#ff9; border:1px solid #aaa;"| *

|Won all four events in the same season

| style="background:#efefff; border:1px solid #aaa;" |

|Won three events in the same season

{| class="wikitable" style="font-size:90%"

|- style="font-size:100%"

! Year !! Oberstdorf !! Garmisch- Partenkirchen !! Innsbruck !! Bischofshofen !! Overall victory

| 1953

| Erling Kroken

| Asgeir Dølplads

| Sepp Bradl

| Halvor Næs

| Sepp Bradl

| 1953–54

|style="background: #efefff" | Olav Bjørnstad

| Sepp Bradl

|style="background: #efefff" | Olav Bjørnstad

| 1954–55

| Aulis Kallakorpi

| Torbjørn Ruste

| Hemmo Silvennoinen

| 1955–56

| Aulis Kallakorpi Eino Kirjonen

| Hemmo Silvennoinen

| Koba Zakadze

| Yuri Skvortsov

| Nikolay Kamenskiy

| 1956–57

| Pentti Uotinen

| Nikolay Kamenskiy

| Nikolai Schamov

|style="background: #efefff" | Yukio Kasaya

| Janne Ahonen

| Janne Ahonen (5)

| 2008–09

|    Simon Ammann

|style="background: #efefff" | Wolfgang Loitzl

| 2009–10

| Andreas Kofler

| Gregor Schlierenzauer

| Thomas Morgenstern

| Andreas Kofler

| 2010–11

| Thomas Morgenstern

|    Simon Ammann

| Thomas Morgenstern

| Tom Hilde

| Thomas Morgenstern

| 2011–12

| Gregor Schlierenzauer

| Andreas Kofler

| Thomas Morgenstern

| Gregor Schlierenzauer

| 2012–13

| Anders Jacobsen

| Gregor Schlierenzauer

| Gregor Schlierenzauer (2)

| 2013–14

|    Simon Ammann

| Thomas Diethart

| Anssi Koivuranta

| Thomas Diethart

| 2014–15

| Stefan Kraft

| Anders Jacobsen

| Richard Freitag

| Michael Hayböck

| Stefan Kraft

| 2015–16

| Severin Freund

|style="background: #efefff" | Peter Prevc

| 2016–17

| Stefan Kraft

| Daniel-André Tande

| Kamil Stoch

| 2017–18

| style="background:#ff9;"| Kamil Stoch

| style="background:#ff9;"| Kamil Stoch *

| 2018–19

| style="background:#ff9;"| Ryōyū Kobayashi

| style="background:#ff9;"| Ryōyū Kobayashi *

| 2019–20

| Ryōyū Kobayashi

| Marius Lindvik

| Dawid Kubacki

| 2020–21

| Karl Geiger

| Dawid Kubacki

| Kamil Stoch

| Kamil Stoch (3)

| 2021–22

|style="background: #efefff" | Ryōyū Kobayashi

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.

National quota

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.

References

External links

Four Hills Tournament web site

Tournament hills

Knock-out system

List of winners

National quota

See also

References

External links