Four Hills Tournament 1976/77

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Ski jumping 25th Four Hills Tournament Fédération Internationale de Ski Logo.svg
winner
Tour winner Germany Democratic Republic 1949GDR Jochen Danneberg
Oberstdorf AustriaAustria Anton Innauer
Garmisch-Partenkirchen Germany Democratic Republic 1949GDR Jochen Danneberg
innsbruck Germany Democratic Republic 1949GDR Henry Glass
Bischofshofen SwitzerlandSwitzerland Walter Steiner
Attendees
Nations 14th
athlete 74
1975/76 1977/78

The 25th Four Hills Tournament 1976/77 , a German-Austrian ski jumping competition, took place from December 30, 1976 to January 6, 1977. The venues were Oberstdorf and Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Germany and Innsbruck and Bischofshofen in Austria. The tour was won by Jochen Danneberg from the GDR .

Participant 1976/77

Resignations and new beginnings

After the 1976/77 Olympic season and before the Nordic World Ski Championships in 1978 in Lahti , Finland , the 25th edition of the Four Hills Tournament was seen by quite a few coaches as an intermediate step in the training load. An expression of this was the decline in participation for the first time in years, so that ultimately only 74 jumpers from 14 teams competed. Within the teams, the field of participants had also been massively disarmed, so instead of eight athletes, the Swedes only sent three jumpers to Central Europe as in the previous year. Naturally, an off-season like 1976/77 offered plenty of space for experimentation and introducing new athletes to the competition. After years of stagnation with a total of nine athletes, the German DSV sent a larger selection to tour for the first time. There was an enormous upheaval in the GDR selection after the Olympic Games. Olympic champion and tour winner Hans-Georg Aschenbach decided to retire from competitive sport after persistent knee problems. Rainer Schmidt , who was not considered for the 1976 Olympics, then also took his leave. Selection trainer Dieter Neuendorf was replaced by the no less successful Gotthard Trommler , who until then was responsible for the success of the Nordic combined team led by Ulrich Wehling . As a result, Heinz Wosipiwo , Dietmar Aschenbach , Dietrich Kampf and Martin Weber were no longer considered in the GDR selection, whereby Weber was able to fight his way back into the squad. Last year's winner Danneberg and the bronze medalist from Innsbruck Henry Glaß were now rallying around talents such as Duschk , Weißpflog , Buse or Meisinger , and in the run-up to this, showerk had created the greatest expectations with his performances. A similar rejuvenation could be observed in the Czechoslovak team, where with Rudolf Höhnl the last athlete of the great generation of jumpers around Jiří Raška had left.

Favorite circle

The Swiss Walter Steiner was one of the extended favorites, although he had to do without his high-performing colleague Hans Schmid due to injury. Among the Norwegians, who brought the talents Ruud and Bergerud with them, Johan Sætre was particularly important; the Poles had a top jumper in Stanisław Bobak . The hosts of the 1978 World Cup brought only one talent to Central Europe, Pentti Kokkonen , and there was no sign that the Finns could play a major role in their home World Cup. Due to the upheavals, especially in the GDR selection, one selection ultimately remained in the absolute favorite role: The selection of the ÖSV . Although they celebrated an Olympic victory in Innsbruck, the tragic course of the previous year's tour was still stuck in the bones of the Austrians and was not forgotten. Exceptional talent Toni Innauer lost the overall standings despite three daily victories due to a failed jump on the Bergisel , and ultimately it wasn't even enough for a podium. The lucky winner was Jochen Danneberg, who was the only GDR jumper to stand up to the Austria eagles. In addition there were the events at the Olympic hill in Innsbruck, when every GDR jumper was accompanied by a loud whistling concert. In the end, the Austrians still had one bill to be reckoned with on the tour and a victory for Innauer was actually firmly planned. The material discussions were also not completely over. There were always new suit models and the FIS approval modalities were not always comprehensible.

The Tuchscherer case

To make matters worse, politics also came into play. The GDR combiner Claus Tuchscherer had left the GDR delegation at the Olympic Games because of love and stayed in Austria. After initial ideas to set up a combined selection for Austria around him, Tuchscherer switched to coach Baldur Preiml and the special jumpers. In contrast to so-called republic escapes to the Federal Republic, the GDR was much more conciliatory towards neutral Austria, especially since the sports relations between the two countries were very good. Nonetheless, the start of the tour by Tuchscherer was not yet clear until shortly before the beginning of the first competition, as the new, young DLSV leadership insisted and complained that an athlete was not allowed to jump for two national associations within one season because Tuchscherer and the ÖSV had not properly canceled in due time . Formally, this was even confirmed by the Austrian side, the objection of the DLSV was legal.

nation Athletes
Germany BRBR Germany BR Germany Alfred Grosche , Manfred Runge , Rudi Tusch , Dirk Kramer , Frank Rombach , Christoph Schwarz , Hans Schmid , Peter Leitner , Sepp Schwinghammer
Germany Democratic Republic 1949GDR GDR Henry Glaß , Jochen Danneberg , Martin Weber , Harald Duschk , Thomas Meisinger , Falko Weißpflog , Matthias Buse , Jürgen Thomas
AustriaAustria Austria Reinhold Bachler , Willi Pürstl , Hans Millonig , Karl Schnabl , Toni Innauer , Rudi Wanner , Walter Schwabl , Walter Habersatter jr. , Hans Wallner , Rupert Gürtler , Alois Lipburger , Claus Tuchscherer , Edi Federer
FinlandFinland Finland Jouko Törmänen , Tapio Räisänen , Pekka Hyvärinen , Pentti Kokkonen
ItalyItaly Italy Leos de Crignis , Ivano Wegher , Lido Tomasi
Japan 1870Japan Japan Manabu Ono , Yūji Kawamura , Takao Itō
YugoslaviaYugoslavia Yugoslavia Branko Dolhar , Janez Lostrek , Jose Demsar , Bogdan Norčič
NorwayNorway Norway Johan Sætre , Per Bergerud , Bjarne Naes , Roger Ruud
Poland 1944Poland Poland Henryk Tajner , Stanisław Bobak , Janusz Waluś
SwedenSweden Sweden Lennart Elimä , Odd Brandsegg , Seppo Reijonen
SwitzerlandSwitzerland Switzerland Ernst von Grünigen , Robert Mösching , Walter Steiner , Jean Luc Ungricht , Hansjörg Sumi
Soviet Union 1955Soviet Union Soviet Union Alexei Borowitin , Alexander Karapusow , Yuri Ivanov , Sergei Saitschik , Leonid Komarow
CzechoslovakiaCzechoslovakia Czechoslovakia Leoš Škoda , Jaroslav Balcar , František Novák , Josef Samek , Ján Tánczos
United StatesUnited States United States Chris McNeill , Ron Steele , Jim Maki , Jim Denney

Oberstdorf

After the official training in cold degrees and changing winds had been completed on December 29th, there was a certain disenchantment in the ÖSV camp. While the GDR jumpers regularly jumped distances over 100 m, only a few jumpers among the Austrians managed to keep up. Toni Innauer was still given a chance to win, but the euphoria was somewhat dampened. In addition, the Swiss Steiner (107 m) and the Pole Bobak had demonstrated that they could be expected.
But the world looked very different at the first jump. But first the GDR representatives confirmed their strong training performance. Jochen Danneberg sets the hill record with 110 m, newcomer Harald Duschk followed with 109 m. Only behind did Innauer join. But in the second round, especially Duschk's nerves fluttered a bit, while Innauer improved by 5 m with 109.5 and ultimately even overtook Danneberg. Although named as a top favorite in advance, Innauer was stunned by the day's victory, which was surprising for him, given the training performance. With a 109 m set, Walter Steiner moved up third and pushed the newcomer Harald Duschk off the podium. Henry Glaß rounded off the strong performance of the GDR team with fifth place. The Austrians, on the other hand, no longer exuded great dominance, the second best jumper was Lipburger, who had been rather inconspicuous up until then. Olympic champion Karl Schnabl experimented with the jump suits and only came in 43rd place. The only 18-year-old Czechoslovakian Novak was the second surprise in the top ten next to Duschk.

Item Jumper country Points
01 Anton Innauer AustriaAustria Austria 255.6
02 Jochen Danneberg Germany Democratic Republic 1949GDR GDR 253.7
03 Walter Steiner SwitzerlandSwitzerland Switzerland 252.3
04th Harald showerk Germany Democratic Republic 1949GDR GDR 248.2
05 Henry Glass Germany Democratic Republic 1949GDR GDR 239.4
06th Alois Lipburger AustriaAustria Austria 236.6
07th Jouko Törmänen FinlandFinland Finland 235.3
08th František Novák CzechoslovakiaCzechoslovakia Czechoslovakia 232.5
09 Reinhold Bachler AustriaAustria Austria 230.9
10 Johan Sætre NorwayNorway Norway 229.8

Garmisch-Partenkirchen

The New Year's competition in front of a large crowd saw the Danneberg-Innauer duel again. It didn't look like that after the first round. While Danneberg had already confirmed his very good form in training with record lengths of 98 and 99.5 m, the lightweight Innauer could not cope with the inrun track that had become slower as a result of a hair dryer. On average, the GDR jumpers were 1.4 to 2.6 km / h faster than the Austrians. With Danneberg and Duschk, two GDR representatives took the first two places after round one, while Innauer jumped seven meters shorter and finished sixth, more than nine points behind. With an energy performance, the Austrian managed to jump onto the podium with the second largest width of the second passage of 90 m and even pushed Harald Duschk into third place. The measure of all things on the day was Jochen Danneberg, who jumped another half a meter with 94 m in the second round and ultimately won the New Year's competition with a 12.9 point lead. In addition to Innauer, his colleague Alois Lipburger and, for the first time, Alfred Pungg also placed in the top ten, while Olympic champion Schnabl continued to jump behind. In addition to veteran Henry Glaß, the newcomers Weber and Thomas from the GDR team placed in the top ten for the first time. Thus, despite the many newcomers, the GDR team returned with a strength that was last seen in the 1973/74 World Cup. In the overall standings the leaders took turns, with last year's winner Danneberg now leading with 11 points ahead of Innauer. Newcomer Harald Duschk took an excellent third place. Alois Lipburger was somewhat unexpectedly the second strongest Austrian in sixth place.

Intermediate result after 2 jumps
Item Jumper Points
01. Danneberg 488.9
02. Innauer 477.9
03. Shower room 468.3
04th Steiner 465.0
05. Glass 458.7
06th Lipburger 448.5
Item Jumper country Points
01 Jochen Danneberg Germany Democratic Republic 1949GDR GDR 235.2
02 Anton Innauer AustriaAustria Austria 222.3
03 Harald showerk Germany Democratic Republic 1949GDR GDR 235.2
04th Henry Glass Germany Democratic Republic 1949GDR GDR 219.3
05 Johan Sætre NorwayNorway Norway 213.5
06th Walter Steiner SwitzerlandSwitzerland Switzerland 212.7
07th Alois Lipburger AustriaAustria Austria 211.9
08th Alfred Pungg AustriaAustria Austria 209.4
09 Jürgen Thomas Germany Democratic Republic 1949GDR GDR 208.6
10 Martin Weber Germany Democratic Republic 1949GDR GDR 208.3

innsbruck

Henry Glass
  • Date: January 4, 1977
  • Country: AustriaAustriaAustria 
  • Ski jump: Bergisel ski jump

After the disaster in Innauer last year and the constellation of points in the overall tour standings, the tour on the Olympic hill on Bergisel was heading for its climax. In addition, there was the expectation of Innauer and his compatriots that there should actually be no other winner than Innauer on the anniversary tour. In the end, the circumstances surrounding the day of the jump were hard to beat in terms of drama. First of all, the training had to be canceled the day before due to a hair dryer break-in. On the day of the jump itself, which then dragged on for many hours, snowfall and fog obviously not only affected the jumpers, but also the judges and the new computer-aided distance measurement. While Innauer's jump of only 83.5 m, which means he wasn't even in the top fifteen, was a shock for all of Austria, the evaluation of Jochen Danneberg's jump was even more exciting. The overall leader initially stood his 96 m jump, but fell on the opposite slope. This was assessed very differently by the judges, some saw him as confessed, others as fallen. The Japanese Yagi Hiroshi took it to extremes, first entering a posture grade of 15.5 into the computer, but then correcting it to 5.5 shortly afterwards, thus classifying the jump as having fallen. As a result, Danneberg was deducted another eight points, which led to a lead by Innauer in the overall standings. In the second round he jumped an almost sensational 101.5 m, which was only determined after a distance correction and thus meant a third place that was hardly considered possible at the end of the day. Henry Glaß's victory of the day almost went under over all the hustle and bustle surrounding the two top people. With the greatest distance of 98 m, the Klingenthaler already led after the first run, with a good 96 m in the second run, even the Swiss Walter Steiner could not push him from first place with his jump over 101 m. The overall very good performance of the Austrians was almost pushed into the background, because with Schnabl, Bachler and Pungg, three of Innauer's colleagues were in the top ten. After the correction of the result, Danneberg initially finished ninth in the daily standings, which meant that Toni Innauer was 0.4 points ahead of his closest competitor and that his dream of overall victory was now within reach. But the calculation was made without the team management of the GDR selection. This protested against the subsequent correction of the result and was right, so that Danneberg took sixth place in the daily ranking. Much more important for him, however, were the effects on the overall standings, because in this he still led with seven points ahead of Innauer. Only three points behind was now the winner of the day, Henry Glaß, and only one point separated him from the second Walter Steiner. Behind it there was a gap of almost 20 points in the overall ranking, so that there were four contenders for the overall victory before the final competition in Bischofshofen.

Intermediate result after 3 jumps
Item Jumper Points
01. Danneberg 702.8
02. Innauer 695.2
03. Glass 692.3
04th Steiner 691.3
05. Shower room 671.4
06th Bachler 651.5
Item Jumper country Points
01 Henry Glass Germany Democratic Republic 1949GDR GDR 233.6
02 Walter Steiner SwitzerlandSwitzerland Switzerland 226.3
03 Anton Innauer AustriaAustria Austria 217.3
04th Karl Schnabl AustriaAustria Austria 216.4
05 Reinhold Bachler AustriaAustria Austria 216.1
06th Jochen Danneberg Germany Democratic Republic 1949GDR GDR 213.9
07th Yuri Ivanov Soviet Union 1955Soviet Union Soviet Union 213.5
08th Alfred Pungg AustriaAustria Austria 210.4
09 Ján Tánczos CzechoslovakiaCzechoslovakia Czechoslovakia 207.9
10 Thomas Meisinger Germany Democratic Republic 1949GDR GDR 203.5

Bischofshofen

In front of around 20,000 spectators, the tour headed for the final and after Toni Innauer had sailed in the test run on 104 m, the belief in Innauer's overall victory was greater than ever. But after this sentence the jury decided to shorten the run-up, which inevitably led to lower speeds and put lightweights like Innauer at a disadvantage. This then resulted in the 80 m of the Austrian in the first round, with which the overall victory was almost gone. But another athlete Danneberg contested the overall victory. With the greatest distance of 96 m in the first round, the Swiss Walter Steiner took the lead just ahead of Klaus Tuchscherer and took Danneberg, who jumped 91 m over 13 points. This meant that Steiner was the overall leader by one point after the first round. But in the second round Danneberg countered after an extension of the run-up with the daily best distance of 102.5 m, the only jump over the hundred meter mark that day, which meant third place in the daily standings. Steiner's 98 m were enough for the day's victory, but not for the overall victory. In the shadow of this duel, Innauer touched down in the second round after 90 m, which meant 19th place at the end. He also admitted that he wasn’t able to cope with the nervous strain that day. His teammates, however, did better. Karl Schnabl moved up to second place with 99 m in the second round, ahead of Danneberg, Tuchscherer achieved his best result of the tour with fifth place. On the other hand, there was the GDR team, which was able to bring a total of five jumpers into the top ten, including Harald Duschk, who moved up again in the overall standings.

Item Jumper country Points
01 Walter Steiner SwitzerlandSwitzerland Switzerland 220.4
02 Karl Schnabl AustriaAustria Austria 217.0
03 Jochen Danneberg Germany Democratic Republic 1949GDR GDR 215.7
04th Thomas Meisinger Germany Democratic Republic 1949GDR GDR 211.6
05 Klaus Tuchscherer AustriaAustria Austria 207.5
06th Harald showerk Germany Democratic Republic 1949GDR GDR 204.4
07th Per Bergerud NorwayNorway Norway 200.2
08th Henry Glass Germany Democratic Republic 1949GDR GDR 200.1
09 Martin Weber Germany Democratic Republic 1949GDR GDR 198.1
10 Hans Millonig AustriaAustria Austria 196.1

Final score

Again the tour lived off the duel between Innauer and Danneberg. While the decision in favor of Danneberg had already been made in Innsbruck last year, both opponents and other top athletes had every chance of overall victory until the last competition. But Innauer again became a tragic hero, broke because of his expectations and those of the public in Austria. As in the previous year, he even slipped out of the podium due to his crash in the last jump and was again ungrateful fourth. In place of the Vorarlberger, Walter Steiner, a jumper, has now taken on the role of pursuer, whom one did not necessarily have to reckon with before the start of the season, but who had already been on tour second in 1973. With his win of the day in Bischofshofen, he challenged Danneberg to the limit of his ability, but the Thuringian was nervous enough to win his second tour. Danneberg's tour victory was completed by an extremely powerful GDR selection, which placed three, five, six and ten in the top ten of the overall ranking. Among them were showerk, Meisinger and Weber, three newcomers to the tour, which also showed that the trainer and generation change had not led to a drop in performance. Although the Austrian selection with four athletes in the top ten showed their top class, they could not achieve a podium place in the overall standings despite the exceptional talent Innauer.

rank
Surname nation Overall
rating
Colonel
village
Garmisch-
Partenk.
Inns-
Bruckhaus
Episcopate
hofen
01 Jochen Danneberg Germany Democratic Republic 1949GDR GDR 918.5 253.7 / 02. 235.2 / 01. 213.9 / 06. 215.7 / 03.
02 Walter Steiner SwitzerlandSwitzerland Switzerland 911.7 252.3 / 03. 212.7 / 06. 226.3 / 02. 220.4 / 01.
03 Henry Glass Germany Democratic Republic 1949GDR GDR 892.4 239.4 / 05. 219.3 / 04. 233.6 / 01. 200.1 / 08.
04th Toni Innauer AustriaAustria Austria 876.0 255.6 / 01. 222.3 / 02. 217.3 / 03. 180.8 / 19.
05 Harald showerk Germany Democratic Republic 1949GDR GDR 875.8 248.2 / 04. 220.1 / 03. 203.1 / 11. 204.4 / 06.
06th Thomas Meisinger Germany Democratic Republic 1949GDR GDR 845.7 223.2 / 12. 207.4 / 11. 203.5 / 10. 211.6 / 04.
07th Karl Schnabl AustriaAustria Austria 844.7 211.5 / 29. 199.8 / 21. 216.4 / 04. 217.0 / 02.
08th Reinhold Bachler AustriaAustria Austria 828.8 230.9 / 09. 204.5 / 14. 216.1 / 05. 177.3 / 25.
09 Alfred Pungg AustriaAustria Austria 827.1 219.7 / 16. 209.4 / 08. 210.4 / 08. 187.6 / 14.
10 Martin Weber Germany Democratic Republic 1949GDR GDR 818.7 216.3 / 21. 208.3 / 10. 196.0 / 17. 198.1 / 09.

literature

  • Willi Knecht: The divided arena . Presseverlag Bahr, Nuremberg 1968, DNB 457237554 .

Individual evidence

  1. New times. November 23, 1976, p. 6.
  2. Berliner Zeitung. April 5, 1976, p. 6.
  3. Berliner Zeitung. November 20, 1976, p. 4.
  4. Taken at the grain . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna December 30, 1976, p. 13 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
  5. Innauer stunned by victory . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna December 31, 1976, p. 24 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
  6. Innauer: I 've never been so happy about second place . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna January 3, 1977, p. 11 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
  7. New Germany. January 3, 1977, p. 7.
  8. «First place thanks to the judge's mistake» . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna January 3, 1977, p. 11 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
  9. Berliner Zeitung. January 3, 1977, p. 4.
  10. Innauer: Without concentration . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna 7th January 1977, p. 13 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).