The Four Hills Tournament has been seeing in the New Year for almost 60 years, with December 29 a date on every ski jumper's calendar...
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The most important number of all! Comprising four Ski Jumping World Cup events, the Four Hills tournament will begin at the Schattenberg Ski Jump, a ski jumping hill located in Oberstdorf, Germany. The hill which has also held two FIS Nordic World Ski Championships has kicked off the tournament on December 29 every year since 1952. Garmisch-Partenkirchen, in Germany, and Innsbruck and Bischofshofen, in Austria, complete the four-midable line-up.
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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 find the winner.
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One of the tournament's peculiarities is its controversial qualifying system. Unlike the other ski jumping events where the best 30 competitors of the first series qualify for the second series, all four 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 for the second series. It is theoretically possible therefore that a competitor 12th after the first series result will not qualify for the second series (if he loses his internal duel and five lucky losers and winners of their duels have better results) while someone finishing 49th will qualify, if his 'rival' has a worse result.
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The record distance jumped in metres at a Four Hills event. In 2010, Swiss Simon Ammann matched Norwegian Sigurd Pettersen’s achievement seven years earlier by clearing over 143 metres at the Große Olympiaschanze in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
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Janne Ahonen is the only ski jumper to have won the tournament five times, with wins in 1998/99, 2002/03, 2004/05, 2005/06 and 2007/08. Jens Weissflog was the first ski jumper to reach four wins. He won the tournament in 1984, 1985, 1991 and 1996. The next most prolific in terms of wins are Helmut Recknagel and Bjørn Wirkola, with three titles each. Wirkola's victories came in three consecutive years (1967-1969), a record that stands to this day.
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Ski jumping is thought to have originated in Morgedal, Norway. Olaf Rye, a Norwegian lieutenant, was the first known ski jumper when, in 1809, he launched himself 9.5 metres in the air in front of an audience of other soldiers.
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