What on earth is the Four Hills tournament?

If you come from the US, it's Thanksgiving football, and if you are from Australia, it's the Boxing Day Test. I'm talking about famous sports events with a long tradition that are scheduled in and around the holiday season. Win or lose, the main thing is, they are just there in the background every year, forming part of what is (hopefully) an enjoyable holiday season with the family. Or maybe, depending on your family, an excuse to leave the dinner table.

For Germans and Austrians, the Four Hills ski jumping tournament is part of Christmas and New Year like Glühwein and sugared almonds. Sure, not everyone in Germany or Austria owns a huge, long wide pair of skis and likes to dress up in a neoprene suit, but everyone can appreciate the art of jumping off a huge height. It's a sport of millimeters, of perfect timing, of luck - not to mention the wind factor. This is the responsibility of the coaches at the bottom of the mountain, the guys holding the little flags: we'll come back to this later.

Still, despite the round-the-clock-reporting in Germany, the Four Hills tournament remains a bit of a mystery to the English-language world. The website of the event is completely in German and doesn't even bother offering the normally standard English language subpage with only half the content. Even the event preview on the International Ski Federation (FIS) website is written in overly-enthusiastic, broken English.

It's no surprise really. A quick look over the winners list from the last 62 years, produces only a handful of Americans and Canadians. Not even Eddie the Eagle won it. Instead, its winners come from countries like Norway, Finland, Austria and Germany, with the odd standout from Japan.

A format with tradition

The Four Hills tournament (sometimes called the Four Hills Tour) has been going on in Austria and Germany since 1952, after officials from both countries decided that a multi-day event at various jump sites was the way to go to get their sport a bit more attention. The event was scheduled annually from late December to early January, when snow levels were traditionally good and when people were otherwise looking for things to do. It's only recently that the tournament has battled with low snow levels.

The tournament always starts in Oberstdorf in Germany late in December, before moving to Garmisch-Partenkirchen for the so-called "New Year's Jump" on January 1. Then competitors head across the border to Austria, to compete in Innsbruck and Bischofshofen. This is when things start to really get serious.

Although it's great to win a single event, competitors really only want one thing: to take out the overall Four Hills trophy (known as "The Golden Eagle") by getting the most points across all four events. It's a tough ask because it requires concentration to jump perfectly at all four locations. And then there's that wind factor, which turns most ski jumps into a bit of a lucky dip.

Austrian domination

Austria has dominated the Four Hills Tournament over the last six years in a way that has rarely been seen since Norway and East Germany managed to in the '60s and '70s respectively. In fact, Austria has really turned into the Bayern Munich of ski jumping as far as the "Vierschanzentournee" is concerned.

Five separate Austrians have won the tournament in the last six years, with Gregor Schlierenzauer winning twice in a row in 2012 and 2013. Germany, in contrast, have struggled over the last few years. Their last Four Hills winner was Sven Hannawald way back in 2002.

This year though, the German ski jumpers think they may have a chance, with the country's top ski jumper Severin Freund already engaging in a bit of trash-talking ahead of the event.

"It's time for someone new to win it," Freund said to news agency SID this week. "The Austrians are not as tight as a team as they used to be."

The 26-year-old predicts the chance that someone from outside of Austria winning this year to be "relatively big." Whether it is himself or his team mate Richard Freitag this year, he wasn't prepared to predict. After all, luck always plays a bit of a role in who wins the Four Hills tournament, not to mention the wind conditions. Don't even get me started on the wind factor.

DW will have daily online coverage of the Four Hills tournament at www.dw.de/sports as soon as the event gets underway on Sunday, December 28.