2004–05 Four Hills Tournament

The 53rd edition of the annual Four Hills Tournament was held in the traditional venues: Oberstorf and Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Germany, and Innsbruck and Bischofshofen in Austria.

Four Hills Tournament
at the 2004-05 FIS Ski Jumping World Cup
VenuesSchattenbergschanze, Große Olympiaschanze, Bergiselschanze, Paul-Ausserleitner-Schanze
LocationGermany, Austria
Dates28 December 2004 (2004-12-28) – 6 January 2005 (2005-01-06)
Competitors93 from 20 nations
Medalists
gold medal 
silver medal 
bronze medal 
Finishing almost 50 points ahead of runners-up Martin Höllwarth, the third out of Janne Ahonen's five Four Hills victories was the most distinct.

The Four Hills tournament counts as part of the World Cup season. Before the competition in Oberstorf, eight out of twenty-eight events were already held. Janne Ahonen had won seven of them, and placed second in the only one he did not. This early-season dominance of the Finnish athlete, who had already won the Four Hills tournament twice before, made him the favourite for the title, and Ahonen did not disappoint. He won the first three events, though he failed to become the second ski jumper after Sven Hannawald to win all four events of the tournament when runners-up Martin Höllwarth snatched the victory at the final event in Bischofshofen.

Format

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At each of the four events, a qualification round would be held. The 50 best jumpers would qualify for the competition. The fifteen athletes leading the World Cup at the time would qualify automatically. In case of an omitted qualification or a result that would normally result in elimination, they would instead qualify as 50th.

Unlike the procedure at normal World Cup events, the 50 qualified athletes would be paired up for the first round of the final event, with the winner qualifying for the second round. The rounds start with the duel between #26 and #25 from the qualification round, followed by #27 vs #24, up to #50 vs #1. The five best duel losers, so-called 'Lucky Losers' also qualify for the second round.

For the tournament ranking, the total points earned from each jump are added together. The World Cup points collected during the four events are disregarded in this ranking.

World Cup Standings

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The standings at the time of the tournament, after seven out of twenty-two events, were as follows:[1]

Rank Name Points
01.   Janne Ahonen 780
02.   Jakub Janda 448
03.   Martin Höllwarth 397
04.   Roar Ljøkelsøy 379
05.   Thomas Morgenstern 328
06.   Matti Hautamäki 323
07.   Andreas Widhölzl 298
08.   Adam Małysz 277
09.   Noriaki Kasai 228
10.   Alexander Herr 218

Participating nations and athletes

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The number of athletes a nation was allowed to nominate was dependent on previous results. In addition, a "national group" from the host nation is added to each event.

The defending champion was Sigurd Pettersen. Six other competitors had also previously won the Four Hills tournament: Andreas Goldberger in 1992-93 and 1994–95, Janne Ahonen in 1998-99 and 2002–03, Primož Peterka in 1996-97, Kazuyoshi Funaki in 1997-98, Andreas Widhölzl in 1999-00 and Adam Małysz in 2000-01.

The following athletes were nominated:

Nation Starting Spots Number of Athletes Athletes
  Germany 8 + 8 16 Alexander Herr, Georg Spaeth, Michael Uhrmann, Jörg Ritzerfeld, Michael Neumayer, Stephan Hocke, Maximilian Mechler, Martin Schmitt
National Group: Andreas Wank, Christian Bruder, Ferdinand Bader, Stefan Pieper, Kai Bracht, Julian Musiol, Mark Krauspenhaar, Hans Petrat
  Austria 8 + 8 16 Martin Höllwarth, Thomas Morgenstern, Andreas Widhölzl, Wolfgang Loitzl, Andreas Goldberger, Florian Liegl, Andreas Kofler, Balthasar Schneiderbr />National Group: Stefan Kaiser, Reinhard Schwarzenberger, Martin Koch, Roland Müller, Mathias Hafele, Stefan Thurnbichler, Manuel Fettner, Christian Nagiller
  Belarus 2 2 Maksim Anisimov, Petr Chaadaev
  China 2 3 Tian Zhandong, Li Yang (Oberstorf and Innsbruck only), Wang Jianxun (Bischofshofen only)
  Czech Republic 4 5 Jakub Janda, Jan Mazoch, Jan Matura, Michal Doležal (until Garmisch-Partenkirchen), Antonin Hajek (Innsbruck onward)
  Estonia 2 2 Jaan Jüris, Jens Salumäe
  Finland 5 5 Janne Ahonen, Matti Hautamäki, Tami Kiuru, Veli-Matti Lindström, Risto Jussilainen
  France 3 3 David Lazzaroni, Emmanuel Chedal (Garmisch-Partenkirchen onward), Nicolas Dessum (Garmisch-Partenkirchen onward)
  Japan 6 6 Noriaki Kasai, Daiki Itō, Hideharu Miyahira, Kazuyoshi Funaki, Akira Higashi, Kazuya Yoshioka
  Kazakhstan 2 2 Asan Tahtahunov, Radik Zhaparov
  Netherlands 1 1 Boy van Baarle (Innsbruck onward)
  Norway 8 8 Roar Ljøkelsøy, Lars Bystøl, Bjørn Einar Romøren, Henning Stensrud, Sigurd Pettersen, Tommy Ingebrigtsen, Daniel Forfang, Morten Solem
  Poland 3 4 Adam Małysz, Robert Mateja, Krystian Długopolski (until Innsbruck), Stefan Hula (Bischofshofen only)
  Russia 2 3 Dimitry Vassiliev, Ildar Fatchullin (until Garmisch-Partenkirchen), Dimitry Ipatov (Innsbruck onward)
  Slovakia 1 1 Martin Mesík
  Slovenia 5 6 Jernej Damjan, Rok Benkovič, Peter Žonta, Primož Peterka, Robert Kranjec (until Innsbruck), Bine Zupan (only Bischofshofen)
  South Korea 2 2 Kang Chil-ku (Innsbruck onward), Kim Hyun-ki (Innsbruck onward)
  Sweden 2 2 Johan Erikson, Isak Grimholm (Innsbruck onward)
  Switzerland 4 4 Simon Ammann, Michael Möllinger, Andreas Küttel, Marco Steinauer (Oberstorf only)
  United States 2 2 Clint Jones, Alan Alborn

Results

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Oberstorf

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  Schattenbergschanze, Oberstorf
28-29 December 2004

Defending champion Sigurd Pettersen was not among the fifteen pre-qualified jumpers, and only placed 63rd in the qualification round. Thus, he failed to qualify.

In the final event, Roar Ljøkelsøy's jump over 140.0 meters catapulted him from 18th place after the first round onto 2nd place overall.

Qualification winner:   Janne Ahonen

Rank Name Points
1   Janne Ahonen 268.4
2   Roar Ljøkelsøy 258.8
3   Adam Małysz 253.8
4   Daiki Itō 247.5
5   Martin Höllwarth 245.7
6   Matti Hautamäki 244.7
7   Jernej Damjan 243.1
8   Michael Uhrmann 242.7
9   Jakub Janda 242.0
10   Dmitri Vassiliev 239.9

Garmisch-Partenkirchen

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  Große Olympiaschanze, Garmisch-Partenkirchen
31 December 2004 - 1 January 2005

Qualification winner:   Janne Ahonen

Rank Name Points
1   Janne Ahonen 260.1
2   Thomas Morgenstern 254.1
3   Georg Spaeth 247.2
4   Martin Höllwarth 243.0
5   Michael Uhrmann 236.6
6   Jakub Janda 233.1
7   Roar Ljøkelsøy 232.6
  Adam Małysz 232.6
9   Andreas Widhölzl 229.5
10   Daiki Itō 228.1

Innsbruck

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  Bergiselschanze, Innsbruck
02-3 January 2005

Qualification winner:   Janne Ahonen

Rank Name Points
1   Janne Ahonen 243.8
2   Adam Małysz 236.8
3   Jakub Janda 232.5
4   Thomas Morgenstern 229.0
5   Martin Höllwarth 228.5
6   Andreas Widhölzl 227.3
7   Martin Schmitt 223.7
8   Michael Uhrmann 220.3
9   Akira Higashi 219.9
10   Tommy Ingebrigtsen 218.5

Bischofshofen

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  Paul-Ausserleitner-Schanze, Bischofshofen
05-6 January 2005

Qualification winner:   Martin Höllwarth

Rank Name Points
1   Martin Höllwarth 277.0
2   Janne Ahonen 271.0
3   Daiki Itō 269.5
4   Jakub Janda 265.2
5   Thomas Morgenstern 263.9
6   Roar Ljøkelsøy 262.7
7   Adam Małysz 262.1
8   Georg Spaeth 256.3
9   Sigurd Pettersen 252.1
10   Noriaki Kasai 245.9

Final ranking

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Rank Name Oberstorf Garmisch-Partenkirchen Innsbruck Bischofshofen Points
1   Janne Ahonen 1st 1st 1st 2nd 1043.3
2   Martin Höllwarth 5th 4th 5th 1st 994.2
3   Thomas Morgenstern 11th 2nd 4th 5th 985.8
4   Adam Małysz 3rd 7th 2nd 7th 985.3
5   Jakub Janda 9th 6th 3rd 4th 972.8
6   Roar Ljøkelsøy 2nd 7th 13th 6th 969.7
7   Daiki Itō 4th 10th 11th 3rd 962.7
8   Michael Uhrmann 8th 5th 8th 13th 939.0
9   Georg Spaeth 21st 3rd 17th 8th 928.5
10   Matti Hautamäki 6th 11th 19th 12th 922.2

After failing to qualify in Oberstorf, the defending Four Hills champion, Sigurd Pettersen, ultimately ranked 22nd overall (678.1 points).

References

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  1. ^ ""e.on ruhrgas" FIS World Cup Ski-Jumping 2004/2005 World Cup Standings" (PDF). FIS. 2004.
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