Bjørn Tore Wirkola (born 4 August 1943) is a Norwegian former

ski jumper Ski jumping is a winter sport in which competitors aim to achieve the farthest jump after sliding down on their skis from a specially designed curved ramp. Along with jump length, competitor's aerial style and other factors also affect the fina ...

Career

He became World Champion in

Oslo Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of ...

in 1966, winning both the large and normal hill competitions. The 1966 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships were also held in conjunction with the

Holmenkollen ski festival The Holmenkollen Ski Festival ( no, Holmenkollen skifestival or ) is a traditional annual Nordic skiing event in Holmenkollen, Oslo, Norway. The full official name of the event is Holmenkollen FIS World Cup Nordic. History It takes place in March ...

, making Wirkola the Holmenkollen champion as well (a feat he would repeat the following year). Wirkola won the

Four Hills Tournament The Four Hills Tournament (german: link=no, Vierschanzentournee) or the German-Austrian Ski Jumping Week (german: link=no, Deutsch-Österreichische Skisprung-Woche) is a ski jumping event composed of four World Cup events and has taken place in ...

from 1967 to 1969, and is still the only ski jumper who has won this tournament three years in a row. He also competed at three Winter Olympics: in

1964 Events January * January 1 – The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland is dissolved. * January 5 - In the first meeting between leaders of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches since the fifteenth century, Pope Paul VI and Patriarch ...

he finished eleventh in the Nordic combined, in

1968 Winter Olympics The 1968 Winter Olympics, officially known as the X Olympic Winter Games (french: Les Xes Jeux olympiques d'hiver), were a winter multi-sport event held from 6 to 18 February 1968 in Grenoble, France. Thirty-seven countries participated. Frenchm ...

Grenoble lat, Gratianopolis , commune status = Prefecture and commune , image = Panorama grenoble.png , image size = , caption = From upper left: Panorama of the city, Grenoble’s cable cars, place Saint- ...

, he achieved his best finish with a fourth place in the individual normal hill, 0.6 points behind the bronze medalist

Baldur Preiml Baldur Preiml (born 8 July 1939, in Bruggen) is an Austrian former ski jumper who competed from 1960 to 1968. His best-known finish was a Bronze medal in the Individual Normal Hill at the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble lat, Gratianopolis ...

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

, and the

1972 Winter Olympics The 1972 Winter Olympics, officially the and commonly known as Sapporo 1972 ( ja, 札幌1972), was a winter multi-sport event held from February 3 to 13, 1972, in Sapporo, Japan. It was the first Winter Olympic Games to take place outside Europe ...

, where he finished 37th in the wind-ravaged event in the Okurayama large hill. On 12 March 1966, on official training, he set his first world record at 145.5 metres (477 ft) and another one on the next day at 146 metres (479 ft), both on

Vikersundbakken Vikersundbakken or Vikersund Hill is a ski flying hill at Vikersund in Modum, Norway. It is one of the two largest purpose-built ski flying hills in the world. Nine world records have been set there, including the current record of 253.5 met ...

Vikersund Vikersund is a town of 3,232 (in 2020) inhabitants in the municipality capital of Modum, in the county of Viken, Norway. Overview Vikersund is located 30 kilometers south of Hønefoss and 40 kilometers northwest of Drammen. The village is loca ...

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

. On 21 March 1969, he set his third world record at 156 metres (512 ft) and the next day his last world record at 160 metres (525 ft), both at the opening of Velikanka bratov Gorišek K153 in

Planica Planica () is an Alpine valley in northwestern Slovenia, extending south from the border village of Rateče, not far from another well-known ski resort, Kranjska Gora. Further south, the valley extends into the Tamar Valley, a popular hiking d ...

Yugoslavia Yugoslavia (; sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Jugoslavija, Југославија ; sl, Jugoslavija ; mk, Југославија ;; rup, Iugoslavia; hu, Jugoszlávia; rue, label=Pannonian Rusyn, Югославия, translit=Juhoslavija ...

. For his achievements as a ski jumper, Wirkola was awarded the Holmenkollen medal in 1968 (shared with

King Olav V Olav V (; born Prince Alexander of Denmark; 2 July 1903 – 17 January 1991) was the King of Norway from 1957 until his death in 1991. Olav was the only child of King Haakon VII of Norway and Maud of Wales. He became heir apparent to the Nor ...

Assar Rönnlund Bernt Assar Rönnlund (3 September 1935 – 5 January 2011) was a Swedish cross-country skier. Rönnlund's biggest success was at the 1962 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships in Zakopane where he won two gold medals (15 km and 4 × 10 ...

, and

Gjermund Eggen Gjermund Eggen (5 June 1941 – 6 May 2019) was a Norwegian cross-country skier who won three gold medals at the 1966 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships. The championships were held in Oslo in conjunction with the Holmenkollen ski festival, an ...

). The common parlance expression

jumping after Wirkola Jumping after Wirkola, an idiom of Norwegian origin (''hoppe etter Wirkola''), describes the prospect of and the difficulties associated with embarking on a task where one's immediate predecessor has accomplished an unusually good job. An English ...

has come to refer to situations where one embarks on a task where one's predecessor has done a particularly good job – or where one is unlikely to succeed. Besides ski jumping Wirkola played

association football Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

for

Rosenborg BK Rosenborg Ballklub, commonly referred to simply as Rosenborg () or RBK, is a Norwegian professional football club from Trondheim that plays in Eliteserien. The club has won a record 26 league titles, a shared record 12 Norwegian Football Cup ti ...

in the

Norwegian Premier League Eliteserien () is a Norwegian professional league for association football clubs. At the top of the Norwegian football league system, it is the country's primary football competition. Contested by 16 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion ...

from 1971 to 1974, and won both league and cup championships in 1971. The same year he was awarded

Egebergs Ærespris The Egebergs Ærespris ("Honorary Prize of Egeberg") is a prize awarded to Norwegian athletes who excel in more than one sport. The prize was created by Ferdinand Julian Egeberg, and consists of a bronze statuette modelled by sculptor Magnus Vigr ...

; recipients of that prize had to be international competitors in one sport and top-level national competitors in a different sport. Wirkola is of

Kven KVEN (1520 AM, "La Voz 1520 AM & 96.3 FM") is a commercial radio station that is licensed to Port Hueneme, California and serves the Ventura County area. The station is owned by Gold Coast Broadcasting and broadcasts a Spanish-language news/tal ...

descent.

Ski jumping world records

Not recognized! Crash at world record distance.

References

External links

*
Holmenkollen medalists
– click Holmenkollmedaljen for downloadable pdf file
Holmenkollen winners since 1892
– click Vinnere for downloadable pdf file * ''Olympiske vinterleketer 1924–2006'', Åge Dalby, Jan Greve,

Per Jorsett Per Jorsett (11 May 1920 – 30 January 2019) was a Norwegian freelance sports reporter, sport historian and sports shooter. He reported for '' Sportsmanden'' from 1945 to 1961, and for the newspapers ''Dagbladet'' and ''Nationen''. He had commi ...

, Akilles forlag, 2006, , pp. 93–101.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wirkola, Bjoern 1943 births Living people People from Alta, Norway Nordic combined skiers at the 1964 Winter Olympics Ski jumpers at the 1964 Winter Olympics Ski jumpers at the 1968 Winter Olympics Ski jumpers at the 1972 Winter Olympics Holmenkollen medalists Holmenkollen Ski Festival winners Norwegian footballers Association football forwards Norwegian male Nordic combined skiers Olympic ski jumpers of Norway Olympic Nordic combined skiers of Norway Rosenborg BK players FIS Nordic World Ski Championships medalists in ski jumping Eliteserien players Norwegian people of Kven descent Sportspeople from Troms og Finnmark 20th-century Norwegian people