The Four-Hills-Tournament starts with a tensing qualification in Oberstdorf today!

The Four-Hills-Tournament starts with a tensing qualification in Oberstdorf today!

A great sunset and an audience of about 9000 welcomed not only the national team and national group of Germany but also the rest of the circus, especially the strong teams of Poland and Austria, in Oberstdorf, Germany.

Anders Jacobsen, who already won the Tournament in the 2006/07 season, won the qualification ahead of Dimitry Vassiliev 130.5m; 138.2points) , who showed his strong phase again and Tom Hilde, who’s length of 134.5m (136.5points) was only beaten by Michael Neumayer (135m; 7th). But because this wasn’t a normal qualification but the way to mix up the rivals for tomorrow’s k.o.-mode competition, we also have to count the results of all prequalified jumpers. This makes Gregor Schlierenzauer the best athlete of today (131.5m; 149.6points). Also Wolfgang Loitzl (3rd) and Richard Freitag (4th), as well as Severin Freund (6th) and Simon Ammann (7th) have been able to place themselves among the best. Shooting star Andreas Wellinger on the other hand fell back on place 29, while Andreas Kofler landed on rank 20. But does this mean they’re not as good as expected? This is hardly something to be sure of because tomorrow’s jumping offers some interesting and also some really crual duels: There we have Hilde against Velta, Kranjec against Kofler, Zografski against Hlava, Hvala against Stoch, Queck against Bardal, Takeuchi against Neumayer and Tepeš against Prevc.

Here’s the full list of pairs: Startlist Oberstdorf

To the set German jumpers came yesterday’s COC- winner Martin Schmitt. After 5 years without a victory, he showed the longest and best jumps there. It seems like he could take this amazing feeling to the Tournament. With bib no. 4 (which means no points in the WC in this season) he started early but as already seen in the training session, he was able to hold the lead for a while. He finished on place 21 along with Manuel Fettner (126m; 127.8points). Unfortunately his opponent tomorrow will be team mate Andreas Wank, who has been 28th today.

Localhero Karl Geiger missed the qualification on place 41. If his bad luck continues, he might be one of the athletes, who will be out, when Werner Schuster has to reduce his team from 12 to 6 jumpers right before Innsbruck.

Piotr Zyla, who was able to take the lead shortly after Schmitt lost it, stayed in the leaderbox for a long while. There we can see, that a short break can be the tiny bit, someone needs to come back stronger. Also the rest of the Polish team was in a good form today: no jumper missed the qualification; while Zyla finished 9th, Kubacki 15th, Stoch 16th and Stefan Hula 18th .

The surprise of today was Heung-Chul Choi, who managed the qualification (121m) but has to fight against Anders Jacobsen in the upcoming race. We also were astonished to see Daiki Ito again. Japan didn’t tell anything about his condition but it seems he lost his feeling as he lost a place on tomorrow’s start list. His team mate Takeuchi nearly fell after his landing but managed to get onto his feet again in the outrun.

Nice to mention is that Davide Bresadola as well as Sebastian Colloredo (33rd) are both qualified. Their rivals for tomorrow are Vassiliev and Hula. Also Lauri Asikainen is holding up the flag for Finland on place 26 today. His opponent will be Roma Koudelka, who came back stronger, too, and was on the same level as the only Fin in the competition.

Here's the list of results.

As expected, the Four-Hills-Tournament will be an awesome and close fight and we can be really excited about well-organized and tensing competitions! The first one starts tomorrow at 16.oo!

Stay tuned for tons of pictures by our photographer Kathrin Müller, who’s on the spot for you!

• By Peggy Kierstan (@pikayartist)