 The Four Hills Tournament Simply Explained This is Tom. During the Christmas break, he usually goes away with his parents on vacation somewhere nice and hot. But this year, Tom's dad has to work. Tom is bored. That is, until he comes across the broadcast of a sports event he's never heard of before. The Four Hills Tournament. He does some research and finds out that the Four Hills Tournament is the most important annual event in the calendar for ski jumpers. In ski jumping, the athlete starts at the top of a take-off ramp and descends on skis. They jump from the table at the end. After the flight phase, comes the landing. The aim is to fly as far as possible. A ski jumping competition consists of a qualification jump and a competition with two rounds, that is, two jumps. The ski jumper is awarded points after every jump. These are a combination of the distance and the score from a five-person jury. The jury looks at style and landing. The highest and lowest performance marks are cancelled out. Whoever has the most points after two jumps is the winner. Tom realizes that the Four Hills Tournament is something very special. The tournament has been held every year since 1953, between December 29th and January 6th. It always takes place at the same four ski jumps in Germany and Austria. Augustov, then Garmisch-Partenkirchen, then Innsbruck and Bischofshorfen in Austria. The points from all four competitions are added together, and the person with the most points at the end is the tournament champion. For the athletes, this is a special kind of challenge, as they only have a very short time to get ready for each of the different jumps. Victory in all four individual contests, the Grand Slam, is so difficult to win that so far only one athlete, Sven Hannevaert, has succeeded in achieving this. Winning this tournament is considered as important as winning the World Championship or the Winter Olympics. This is why it attracts such large audiences and high levels of media attention. And something else is different, the knockout system. The top 50 athletes from the qualification round compete directly against one another. The 50th against the first, the 49th against the second and so on. Whoever wins their duel along with the five best losers, the lucky losers, qualify for the second round where it's all about winning. To win in 1953, you would have had to jump around 80 meters every time. Today, the skiers jump over 130 meters. The top winner is the Finnish athlete Janna Ahonen, with five overall victories. It's time for the tournament to start. Tom certainly won't be bored this vacation.