On the 29th. December is the time again: The 66th. Four Hills Tournament starts and stops in Oberstdorf as every year. At SPOX you will learn everything about the tour, the qualification and the jumping.
Richard Freitag is the first German to go on tour as a top favourite for the first time ever. The 26-year-old will thus inherit Martin Schmitt, who was considered the favourite for overall victory in the 2000/2001 season.
The last German victory comes from the 2001/2002 season, when Sven Hannawald won all four jumps. In the last ten years, the Four Hills Tournament has been dominated by the Austrians. In seven out of ten years, six different overall winners came from Austria.
The special thing about the tour is its mode. Every athlete has to qualify for the show jumping competitions, just like at the other stations of the World Cup, the best 50 from the qualification are present on the day of the competition.
There, each jumper competes against another one in a knockout duel to move into the second round: the one who has collected the most points from the duel (consisting of points for distance, posture, wind and approach length).
The duels consist of the respective performances in the qualification: The winner of the qualification meets the 50th, the runner-up to the 49th place. and so on.
The five best losers from the total of 25 duels will also be represented in the final as “Lucky Loser”. In the second round there are 30 jumpers remaining, who leave the backen in a fallen order.
Tickets for all sessions of the four events can be bought on the official homepage of the Four Hills Tournament. Tickets for the kick-off show jumping competition, for example, are available from just over 20 euros.
ARD and ZDF broadcast the entire tour live on free TV. Eurosport also has extensive winter sports coverage on its programme and will be broadcast live during the tour. In Austria, ORF holds the rights to the entire Ski Jumping World Cup and shows the tour live.
The broadcasters also offer a live stream on the Internet. The tour can be watched live at the ARD and ZDF media library as well as at the Eurosport-Player and the ORF-TvThek.
The DSV has an additional contingent of starters available for the jumps in Oberstdorf and Garmisch-Partenkirchen. In addition, the following athletes have so far been in the DSV squad in the World Cup:
Austria is also allowed to send additional jumpers to the start at the last two events of the tour. The Austrian World Cup squad at a glance:
The tour starts on 29. December with the qualification in Oberstdorf, before on 30. December, the opening show jumping will take place. One day later, the athletes have to reach Garmisch-Partenkirchen, about 60 kilometres as the traditional New Year’s Jumping takes place there on January 1,2018.
Only after four consecutive days of competition do the ski-jumping teams have a break. On 03.01. the tour moves to Austria, where the third jumping on the Bergiselschanze takes place the following day. After the Dreikönigsspringen in Bischofshofen the winner of the 66. Four Hills Tournament.