Four Hills Tournament 1972/73

21st Four Hills Tournament
winner
Tour winner	Rainer Schmidt
Oberstdorf	Rainer Schmidt
Garmisch-Partenkirchen	Rainer Schmidt
innsbruck	Sergei Botschkov
Bischofshofen	Rudolf Höhnl
Attendees
Nations	17 ( AUT , BUL , CAN , FIN , FRA , FRG , GDR , ITA , JPN , NOR , POL , SWE , SUI , TCH , URS , YUG , USA )
athlete	97
← 1971/72	1973/74 →

At the 21st Four Hills Tournament 1972/73 , the jumping took place from December 30, 1972 to January 6, 1973 in Germany and Austria . The German venues were Oberstdorf and Garmisch-Partenkirchen , in Austria there were jumping in Innsbruck and Bischofshofen . The tour was won by the GDR jumper Rainer Schmidt .

Attendees

• Olympic champion 1972 : normal hill Yukio Kasaya (JPN); Large hill Wojciech Fortuna (POL)

The post-Olympic season promised another exciting tour from the field of participants. Both Olympic champions from Sapporo were there, but whether they were among the favorites, opinions were divided. The GDR representation was at the start with last year's runner-up Rainer Schmidt and the runner-up in ski flying, Heinz Wosipiwo. The team around coach Dieter Neuendorf was a mixture of experienced and young jumpers and belonged to the closer circle of favorites. The teams from Norway and Czechoslovakia suffered setbacks. Both triple winner Wirkola and last year's winner Mork had stopped jumping. With Tomtum and Prydz they still had jumpers of stature, but a tour victory was hardly to be expected. The Czechoslovaks had to accept the failure of tour winner Jiri Raska , who had fallen badly in a qualifying competition and had a knee operation. However, one attested Rudolf Höhnl the shape of his life and with Hubač or Divila one still had a powerful team, so that the Czechoslovaks continued to be counted among the contenders for victory. In addition, there was a ski jumping nation that had established itself more and more among the world's best in recent years, Switzerland. Under coach Ewald Roscher, Walter Steiner and Hans Schmid in particular advanced to the top of the world. After all, Steiner had won silver on the large hill in Sapporo and was the reigning ski flying world champion. In the end, the Soviet jumpers remained, who were always good for a surprise. However, double world champion Gari Napalkow had to be left at home shortly before departure.

nation	Athletes
BR Germany	Alfred Grosche , Ernst Wursthorn , Sepp Schwinghammer , Bernd Zapf , Albert Wursthorn , Heini Ihle , Rudi Tusch
GDR	Henry Glass , Rainer Schmidt , Heinz Wosipiwo , Hans-Georg Aschenbach , Manfred Wolf , Dietrich Kampf , Bernd Eckstein , Jochen Danneberg
Austria	Reinhold Bachler , Franz Salhofer , Walter Schwabl , Rudi Wanner , Karl Schnabl , Willi Pürstl , Hans Wallner
Bulgaria	Ivan Sandov , Ivan Scharkov , Georgi Guedurov , Georgi Lasev
Finland	Tauno Käyhkö , Kari Ylianttila , Esko Rautionaho , Juhani Ruotsalainen
France	Gilbert Poirot , Jacques Gaillard , Philippe Jacoberger
Italy	Mario Cecon , Leos De Crignis , Ermes Bontempelli
Japan	Yukio Kasaya , Hiroshi Itagaki , Hisayoshi Sawada , Kōji Kakuta , Takafumi Kawabata , Masakatsu Asari
Yugoslavia	Marjan Mesec , Peter Štefančič , Janez Lostrek , Bogdan Norčič , Danilo Pudgar , Marian Prelovsek
Canada	Peter Wilson , Paul Martin , Lyle Speers , Richard Grady , Tom Reaper , Slawomir Kardas , Richard Graves , Kim Fripp
Norway	Bent Tomtum , Frithjof Prydz , Nils-Per Skarseth , Odd Grette , Knut Kongsgård , Kai Solbustad
Poland	Stanisław Gąsienica Daniel , Wojciech Fortuna , Czesław Janik , Józef Tajner , Stanisław Bobak , Tadeusz Pawlusiak
Sweden	Rolf Nordgren , Anders Lundqvist , Christer Karlsson , Eilert Mähler
Switzerland	Hans Schmid , Sepp Zehnder , Walter Steiner , Ernst von Grünigen , Eric Aubert , Fredy Guignard
Soviet Union	Yuri Kalinin , Vladimir Terichev , Sergei Botschkow , Gari Menshikov , Vladimir Smirnov , Vladimir Galushin
Czechoslovakia	Rudolf Höhnl , Zbyněk Hubač , Bohumil Doležal , Karel Kodejška , Leoš Škoda , Jaromír Liďák , Ladislav Divila , Jaroslav Slama
United States	Jeff Wright , Chris McNeill , Dave Tomten , Ron Neal , Ron Stelle

Oberstdorf

• Date: December 30, 1972
• Country: BR Germany 
• Hill: Schattenbergschanze
• Spectators: 12,000

The GDR jumpers put their stamp on this jumping. In addition to the triple success, two other GDR representatives made it into the top ten. Although Hans-Georg Aschenbach jumped with a 106m hill record as in training, but due to his almost crashed first jump and poor posture marks, it was only enough for second place. For Sapporo bronze medalist Rainer Schmidt, it was the first day's victory on the tour.

Item	Jumper	country	Points
01	Rainer Schmidt	GDR	237.0
02	Hans-Georg Aschenbach	GDR	233.5
03	Henry Glass	GDR	226.2
04th	Hans Schmid	Switzerland	220.3
05	Manfred Wolf	GDR	215.5
06th	Rudolf Höhnl	Czechoslovakia	215.0
07th	Dietrich fight	GDR	210.1
08th	Reinhold Bachler	Austria	208.7
09	Esko Rautionaho	Finland	208.4
10	Alfred Grosche	BR Germany	205.4

Garmisch-Partenkirchen

• Date: January 1, 1973
• Country: BR Germany 
• Hill: Large Olympic hill

After a few training jumps such as the Swiss Steiner with 93.5m and the Japanese Kasaya with 92m gave cause that the dominance of the GDR jumpers would be broken, the GDR team again gave the competition no chance in the competition, although Rainer Schmidt was in training fell and suffered a bruise. Only the previously unknown Czechoslovak Jaromír Liďák broke into third place in the phalanx of five GDR jumpers who were among the top six. It was not only the more experienced Schmidt who was convincing, who scored 56 of 60 posture points in the second round for his 91.5m jump. Especially the 19-year-old newcomer Dietrich Kampf was the surprise. With the very low starting number six, his two jumps of 89m each were rated 54.5 and 53.5 points, which was very remarkable at the time. With the second victory in a row and the first victory of a GDR jumper in Garmisch since 1959, Rainer Schmidt extended his lead to almost 25 points. In the overall standings, four other teammates followed him halfway through the tour.

Intermediate result after 2 jumps
Item	Jumper	Points
01.	Schmidt	466.1
02.	Aschenbach	441.3
03.	Glass	440.8
04th	struggle	432.5
05.	wolf	432.3
06th	Schmid	428.0

Item	Jumper	country	Points
01	Rainer Schmidt	GDR	229.1
02	Dietrich fight	GDR	222.4
03	Jaromír Liďák	Czechoslovakia	217.3
04th	Manfred Wolf	GDR	216.8
05	Jochen Danneberg	GDR	215.0
06th	Henry Glass	GDR	214.6
07th	Walter Steiner	Switzerland	214.5
08th	Sergei Botschkov	Soviet Union	212.7
09	Hiroshi Itagaki	Japan	209.5
10	Wojciech Fortuna	Poland	208.4

innsbruck

• Date: January 3, 1973
• Country: Austria 
• Ski jump: Bergisel ski jump

With +10 ° C and rain and correspondingly adverse conditions, the competition started again to break into the phalanx of the GDR team. And this time the Soviet jumper Sergei Botschkow succeeded, who, thanks to good posture marks, decided the jumping with three points ahead of the overall leader Rainer Schmidt. After Hans-Georg Aschenbach in third place, there were also a few favorites like Schmid and Steiner from Switzerland or the Japanese Kasaya. This also had an immediate impact on the overall standings, since the GDR team did not dominate the last two competitions this time.

Intermediate result after 3 jumps
Item	Jumper	Points
01.	Schmidt	695.0
02.	Aschenbach	665.7
03.	Schmid	644.7
04th	wolf	642.9
05.	Botschkov	640.8
06th	Glass	637.0

Item	Jumper	country	Points
01	Sergei Botschkov	Soviet Union	231.9
02	Rainer Schmidt	GDR	228.9
03	Hans-Georg Aschenbach	GDR	224.4
04th	Walter Steiner	Switzerland	221.5
05	Hans Schmid	Switzerland	216.7
06th	Yukio Kasaya	Japan	214.8
07th	Tauno Käyhkö	Finland	212.1
08th	Manfred Wolf	GDR	210.6
09	Tadeusz Pawlusiak	Poland	210.6
10	Hiroshi Itagaki	Japan	209.6

Bischofshofen

• Date: January 6, 1973
• Country: Austria 
• Hill: Paul-Ausserleitner-Schanze

At the last stop on the tour, after three podium places, overall leader Rainer Schmidt was only concerned with securing overall victory with an acceptable performance. In addition, Schmidt had had problems with the jump on the Bischofshofener Schanze for years, so he played it safe and was twelfth in the daily ranking with distances of 99 and 95m. The winner of the day was the Czechoslovak Rudolf Höhnl with a wafer-thin margin of 0.8 points ahead of the again strong Sergei Botschkow. With Liďák and Kodejška, the Czechoslovaks brought three jumpers into the top ten for the first time on this tour and thus reminded of the team strength of recent years. The Japanese Itagaki, in second place after the first round, showed with fifth place that he was the best Japanese. In the extremely exciting and high-class competition, places one and ten were separated by only a little more than eleven points, Hans-Georg Aschenbach, as the best GDR jumper, was able to do a lot for his placement in the overall standings with third place. Bad luck for Dietrich Kampf, whose stylistically clean jump in the first round of 101m was considered to have fallen because he still fell into the snow. So he finished 25th at the end of the day.

Item	Jumper	country	Points
01	Rudolf Höhnl	Czechoslovakia	234.6
02	Sergei Botschkov	Soviet Union	233.4
03	Hans-Georg Aschenbach	GDR	231.8
04th	Jaromír Liďák	Czechoslovakia	231.4
05	Hiroshi Itagaki	Japan	230.7
06th	Jochen Danneberg	GDR	229.8
07th	Karel Kodejška	Czechoslovakia	225.1
08th	Walter Steiner	Switzerland	224.3
09	Manfred Wolf	GDR	223.2
10	Reinhold Bachler	Austria	222.7

Total status

Rainer Schmidt

With a double victory for Rainer Schmidt and Hans-Georg Aschenbach, the GDR ski jumpers finally returned to the top of the world after already good results on the previous year's tour. The preparation for the Olympic Games in Sapporo and the continued high level afterwards under the selection coach Dieter Neuendorf paid off for the first time. Especially in the first two competitions, the dominance of the GDR athletes with five jumpers each in the top ten was almost frightening. With more consistent performances, Henry Glaß and Jochen Danneberg would have made even further progress in the overall ranking. With Rainer Schmidt, the third jumper from the GDR won the tour, overall it was the fifth tour victory for a GDR athlete. One of the positive surprises of the tour was undoubtedly the Soviet representative Sergei Botschkow, who was the only one of his team to keep up with the top athletes and achieved three top ten placements. With a better result in Oberstdorf he could have had a say in the overall victory. The achievements of the Swiss representatives Schmid and Steiner were not surprising, they had already indicated themselves in advance. While the Czechoslovak team had at least one day's victory and a top ten jumper in Rudolf Höhnl, the Scandinavian teams in particular were a disappointment. While the Norwegians, with Mork, were the tour winners last year, they are now far from the top ten. Also the Finns, who with Tauno Käyhkö finished third in the tour last year, had their best man in 12th place. The unsuccessful German and Austrian jumpers continued. A top ten placement in a day's ranking was far too little for these traditional ski jumping nations.

rank	Surname	nation	Overall rating	Colonel village	Garmisch- Partenk.	Inns- bruck	Episcopate hofen
01	Rainer Schmidt	GDR	913.9	237.0 / 01.	229.1 / 01.	228.9 / 02.	218.9 / 12.
02	Hans-Georg Aschenbach	GDR	897.5	233.5 / 02.	207.8 / 11.	224.4 / 03.	231.8 / 03.
03	Sergei Botschkov	Soviet Union	874.2	196.2 / 17.	212.7 / 08.	231.9 / 01.	233.4 / 02.
04th	Hans Schmid	Switzerland	867.2	220.3 / 04.	207.7 / 12.	216.7 / 05.	222.5 / 11.
05	Manfred Wolf	GDR	866.1	215.5 / 05.	216.8 / 04.	210.6 / 08.	223.2 / 09.
06th	Rudolf Höhnl	Czechoslovakia	858.9	215.0 / 06.	205.2 / 16.	204.1 / 12.	234.6 / 01.
07th	Walter Steiner	Switzerland	855.3	195.5 / 19.	214.5 / 07.	221.5 / 04.	224.3 / 08.
08th	Henry Glass	GDR	845.1	226.2 / 03.	214.6 / 06.	196.2 / 22.	209.1 / 21.
09	Hiroshi Itagaki	Japan	844.6	195.0 / 20.	209.5 / 09.	209.6 / 10.	230.7 / 05.
10	Jochen Danneberg	GDR	841.4	194.6 / 21.	215.0 / 05.	202.0 / 13.	229.8 / 06.

literature

• Willi Knecht: The divided arena . Presseverlag Bahr, Nuremberg 1968

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Neue Zeit from January 1, 1973 p. 6
2. ^ New Germany of December 31, p. 5
3. ↑ Berliner Zeitung of January 2, 1973 p. 7
4. ↑ Berliner Zeitung of January 4, 1973 p. 7
5. ↑ Berliner Zeitung of January 7, 1973 p. 4
6. ↑ [1]
7. ↑ [2]
8. ↑ [3]
9. ↑ [4]